four boys
and four girls, and just at the clip of five o'clock them lads jump
out of bed--the eight feet hit the floor at the same minute and come
leppin' down the stairs four abreast, each fellow with a lantern,
and get out to the stable and feed up. The four girls are just the
same--fine, smart, turkey-faced girls they are, with an arm like a
stove-pipe. You'll be all right with the help you've got--you'll have
nearly enough to run a threshin' mill. Any girls?"

"Two girls," said John Watson.

"Two! That's not so bad--they'll be needed all right to help the
missus. I have two girls, too; but one of them's no good--too much
like the mother's folks. You know the Grahams are all terrible
high-headed people--one of the old man's brothers is a preacher down
in the States--Professor Graham, they call him--and sir, they can't
get over it. Martha, my oldest girl, she's all right--straight
Perkins, Martha is--no nonsense about her; but Edith, she's all for
gaddin' round and dressin' up. 'Pa,' she says one day to me, 'I want
a piano'--that was the Graham comin' out of her--and I says, says I
'Edie, my dear, run along now and let me hear you play a toon on the
cream separator or the milkin'-stool,' says I; 'there's more money in
it.' But, by George! the wife kept at me, too, about this piano
business, just pesterin' the very life out o' me, until I got sick of
it. But I got them one at last--I was at a sale in Brandon, last
fall, and I got one for eighty dollars. I told them it cost four
hundred--you have to do it, when you're dealin' with wimmin'--they
like things to cost a lot. Well, sir, I got the worth of my money,
let me tell you. It's a big, long, dappled one, all carved with
grapes and lions. Two or three people can play it at once, and it's
big enough to make a bed on it when there's company. But what do you
think of this now? Oh, it has clean disgusted me. They don't like it
because it won't go in the parlour door, and there isn't room for it
in the hall, and if you'll believe me, it's sittin' out there in the
machine-shed--so I've got to take it down to Winnipeg and try to
change it.

"You see, that's what comes o' lettin' young ones go to school. Since
Edie got her education she thinks she knows more than the rest of us.
My boy, young Bob--but we call him Bud--he's been to school a good
deal; but he and Steadman's boy had a row, and I guess Bud was put
out--I don't know. I was glad enough to get him home to draw p