his thumb to his nose,
aimed his hand toward the supposititious location of the farmer below,
and twirled his outspread fingers in a flickering manner. It is believed
that he intended to convey spirited defiance, or possibly insult, by
this amazing gesture. He grinned contentedly and went to sleep again....
Fortunately Mother was asleep and did not see him acting--as she often
but vainly defined it--"like a young smart Aleck."

Father awakened from an agitating dream of setting the barn afire, and
beheld Mother sitting up amid the hay--an amazing, a quite incredible
situation for Mrs. Seth Appleby. She mildly dabbled at her gray hair,
which was still neat, and looked across in bewilderment. Like a
jack-in-the-box, Father came up out of the hay to greet her.

"How do you like your room in the Wal-dorf-As-torya?" he said. "Sleep
well, old honey?"

"Why--why, I must have!" she marveled. "I don't hardly remember coming
here, though."

"Ready to tramp on?"

She swore that she was. And indeed her cheeks were ruddy with outdoors,
the corners of her eyes relaxed. But she was so stiff that they had
hobbled a mile, and Father had shucked several tons of corn in return
for breakfast, before she ceased feeling as though her legs were made of
extraordinarily brittle glass.

CHAPTER XIV

Sometimes they were feted adventurers who were credited with having
tramped over most of the globe. Sometimes they were hoboes on whom
straggly women shut farm-house doors. But never were they wandering
minstrels. Father went on believing that he intended to play the
mouth-organ and entertain the poor, but actually he depended on his
wood-chopping arm, and every cord he chopped gave him a ruddier flush of
youth, a warmer flush of ambition.

Most people do not know why they do things--not even you and I
invariably know, though of course we are superior to the unresponsive
masses. Many people are even unconscious that they are doing things or
being things--being gentle or cruel or creative or parasitic. Quite
without knowing it, Father was searching for his place in the world. The
New York shoe-stores had decided that he was too old to be useful. But
age is as fictitious as time or love. Father was awakening from the
sleep of drudgery in the one dusty shop, and he was asking what other
place there was for him. He was beginning to have another idea, a better
idea, which he pondered as he came to shoe-stores in small towns....
They wer