e from, is sort of a holiday; but
Saturday morning everybody tries to make things nice about the yard--fix
flower-beds, rake the yard, make the paths nice, and all that."

"Huh!" grunted Marty. "That's work."

"No, it isn't. It's fun," declared Janice, brightly.

"What's the good?" demanded the boy.

"Why, the folks in Greensboro vie with each other to see who shall have
the best-looking yard. Your mother hasn't many flowers----"

"Them dratted hens scratch up all the flowers I plant," sighed Aunt
'Mira. "I give up all hopes of havin' posies till Jason mends the
henyard fence."

"Now you say yourself the hens only lay when they're rangin' around,
'Mira," observed Uncle Jason, mildly.

"Ya-as. They lay," admitted Aunt 'Mira. "But I don't git more'n ha'f of
what they lay. They steal their nests so. Ol' Speckle brought off a
brood only yesterday. I'd been wonderin' where that hen was layin' for a
month."

"But, anyway, we can rake the yard and trim the edges of the walk,"
Janice said to Marty.

"Ya-as, we kin," admitted Marty, grinning. "But will we?"

Janice, however, never lost her temper with this hobbledehoy cousin.
Marty could be coaxed, if not driven. After breakfast she urged him out
to the shed, and they overhauled the conglomeration of rusted and
decrepit hand tools, which had been gathered by Uncle Jason during forty
years of desultory farming.

"Here're three rakes," said Marty. "All of 'em have lost teeth, an'--Hi
tunket! that one's got a broken handle."

"But there are two which are usable," laughed Janice. "Come on, Marty.
Let's rake the front yard all over. You know it will please your
mother. And then you can tote the rubbish away in the wheelbarrow while
I trim the edges of the front walk."

"Huh! we don't never use that front walk. Nobody ever comes to our front
door," said Marty.

"And there's a nice wide porch there to sit on pleasant evenings, too,"
cried Janice.

"Huh!" came Marty's famous snort of derision. "The roof leaks like a
sieve and the floor boards is rotted. Las' time the parson came to call
he broke through the floor an' come near sprainin' his ankle."

"But I thought Uncle Jason was a carpenter, too?" murmured Janice,
hesitatingly.

"Well! didn't ye know that carpenters' roofs are always leakin' an' that
shoemakers' wives go barefoot?" chuckled Marty. "Dad says he'll git
'round to these chores sometime. Huh!"

Nevertheless, Marty set to work with his cousin, and tha