wealth, honesty and knavery, trade and
barter, and so on; for the life of a village is a life in public: the
inmost recesses of every house are known to all the inmates of every
other.

One day, as Ivo was going home with his father from the place where the
latter had been at work, "Father," he asked, "why didn't our Savior
make the trees grow square and save all the trouble of chopping?"

"Why? You stupid boy, there wouldn't be any work for carpenters then,
and no chips."

Ivo said nothing; and his father reflected that, after all, the boy had
a good head, and that it was not right to speak so harshly to him. So
he said, after some time, "Ivo, you must ask your teacher in school, or
his reverence the parson, about such things: remember that."

This was well done in Valentine. Few parents are sufficiently shrewd
and conscienscious to hit upon this only means of escape from their own
ignorance.

But Ivo, instead of going to the schoolmaster or the parson, asked Nat,
and received for answer, "Because trees are wanted for a great many
things besides building."

Ivo was astonished: that, he thought, was an answer worth giving.

A consequence of his intimacy with Nat was that Ivo had no companion of
his own age. But then Nat regarded him as his confidant, and would call
him, caressingly, a "good old soul." In particularly-favored moments he
would tell him of his dog Singout, who had been with him when he had
watched the sheep, and who "had more wit than ten doctors." "I tell
you," Nat asseverated, "Singout used to understand my secret thoughts:
if he only looked at me he knew what I wanted immediately. Did you ever
look at a dog right sharp? They often have a face on which grief is
poured out, just as if they meant to say, 'I could cry because I can't
talk with you.' When I looked at Singout then, he would bark and howl
till my heart ached. If I said a single cross word to him, he wouldn't
eat a morsel for a whole day. The dumb beast was too good for this
world."

"Do dogs go to heaven?" asked Ivo.

"I don't know: there's nothing written about it."

What pleased Nat most of all was Ivo's love for animals; for both old
people and children, who do not know exactly what to love, make animals
the objects of their affections. These pets make no pretensions, exact
no duties; and never contradict us, which is particularly distasteful
to young and old children.

"What a poor beast piggy is!" said Ivo at one time: "she