sight of an angel as her on her knees before me at night, washing
my poor, dirty little feet, that I'd run bare in all day, and making me
decent for bed. There were six of us boys; it seems to me we were all
of a size; and she was just so careful with all of us. I can feel her
hands on my feet yet!" Bartley looked at Lapham's No. 10 boots, and
softly whistled through his teeth. "We were patched all over; but we
wa'n't ragged. I don't know how she got through it. She didn't seem
to think it was anything; and I guess it was no more than my father
expected of her. HE worked like a horse in doors and out--up at
daylight, feeding the stock, and groaning round all day with his
rheumatism, but not stopping."

Bartley hid a yawn over his note-book, and probably, if he could have
spoken his mind, he would have suggested to Lapham that he was not
there for the purpose of interviewing his ancestry. But Bartley had
learned to practise a patience with his victims which he did not always
feel, and to feign an interest in their digressions till he could bring
them up with a round turn.

"I tell you," said Lapham, jabbing the point of his penknife into the
writing-pad on the desk before him, "when I hear women complaining
nowadays that their lives are stunted and empty, I want to tell 'em
about my MOTHER'S life. I could paint it out for 'em."

Bartley saw his opportunity at the word paint, and cut in. "And you
say, Mr. Lapham, that you discovered this mineral paint on the old farm
yourself?"

Lapham acquiesced in the return to business. "I didn't discover it,"
he said scrupulously. "My father found it one day, in a hole made by a
tree blowing down. There it was, lying loose in the pit, and sticking
to the roots that had pulled up a big, cake of dirt with 'em. I don't
know what give him the idea that there was money in it, but he did
think so from the start. I guess, if they'd had the word in those
days, they'd considered him pretty much of a crank about it. He was
trying as long as he lived to get that paint introduced; but he
couldn't make it go. The country was so poor they couldn't paint their
houses with anything; and father hadn't any facilities. It got to be a
kind of joke with us; and I guess that paint-mine did as much as any
one thing to make us boys clear out as soon as we got old enough. All
my brothers went West, and took up land; but I hung on to New England
and I hung on to the old farm, not because