d Thursa when queens are passing by."

When Martha went to the stable to consult with her father she found
that he had been having trouble with the hired man, the one who,
according to Mr. Perkins, "ate like a flock of grasshoppers." Ted had
been milking a cow, when his employer came in to remonstrate with him
about wasting oats when he was feeding the horses. Ted made no reply
until he had the pail half-full. Then suddenly he sprang up and threw
it over his employer.

"You howld w'eat-plugger," he cried, "you drove Bud aw'y with your
meanness, but you can't put hon me. Do your bloomin' chores
yourself!"

When Martha reached the barn she found her father wiping his clothes
with an empty grain-sack. He told her what had happened.

"Jes' think, Martha, that beggar did not say a word until he got the
pail half full, and then he soused it onto me, good hay-fed new milk,
and from the half-Jersey too--he didn't care. This'll set ye back one
churnin' too. But he won't dare to ask me for this week's wages. I
paid him up just a week ago--that'll more than settle for the milk.
So it ain't as bad as it might be." He was shoving a red handkerchief
down the back of his neck, trying to locate some of the lost milk.
"You wouldn't think that half a pail of milk would go so far, now,
would you, Martha? but I tell ye he threw it strong."

Martha suggested dry clothes, and when he was dressed in them she
told him about Libby Anne.

"Certainly she can stay here," Mr. Perkins cried heartily. "No one
will be able to say that we went back on a neighbour. I always liked
Bill, and I always liked Mrs. Cavers, and we'll do our best for the
little girl. George Steadman is the one that ought to take her, but
his missus is away, of course, to Ontario; they'd never take any one,
anyway. People that don't look after their own ain't likely to do
for strangers. When old Mrs. Steadman, George's mother, was there
sick, Mrs. Steadman followed the doctor out one day and asked him
how long the old lady would last; couldn't he give her a rough
estimate--somethin' for her to go by like--for she was wantin' to
send word to the paperhangers; and then she told him that they was
goin' to have the house all done over as soon as Granny was out of
the way, 'but', says she, 'just now we're kinda at a standstill.'
One of Bruce Simpson's girls was working there, and she heard her."

A few days after this Libby Anne's tent raised its white head under
the leafles