e'd be set down for a bite of dinner and one of 'em would climb up his
back and feel his hair--not saying a word, just taking hold of it; then
it would jump down and another would climb up and do the same thing, and
him not daring to defend himself. He'd got so worked up he was afraid to
stay on the place.

"And you know," he says--"what I can't understand--danged if Bert don't
seem to kind of like 'em. You may think I'm a liar, but he waited for one
the other morning when it squealed at him and kept a hold of its hand
clean down to the hay barn. What do you think of that? And besides these
that go round infesting the place outside he's got a short yearling and a
long two-year-old that have to be night-herded. I listened to 'em every
night. One yelled and strangled all last night, till I s'posed, of
course, it was going to perish everlastingly; but here this morning it
was acting like nothing at all had happened.

"All I can say is, Bert don't have much luck. And that littlest yeller
always unswallowing its meals with no effort whatever! It's horrible!
And the mother, with no strength of character--feeble-minded, I
reckon--coddles 'em! She never did cuss 'em out proper or act human
toward 'em. Kids like them, what they need--upside down and three quick
hard ones. I know!"

I was fool enough to argue with him a bit, trying to see if he didn't
have a lick of sense. I told him to look how happy Bert was; and how
his family had made a man of him, him getting more money and saving more
than ever in his past life. Homer said what good would all that money do
him? He'd only fool it away on his wife and children.

"He regrets it, all right," says Homer. "I says to myself the other day:
'I bet a cookie he'd like to be carefree and happy like me!'"

Homer was a piker, even when he made bets with himself. And the short of
it was I sent a man that didn't hate children over to Bert's and kept
Homer on the place here.

He stayed three months and said it was heaven, account of not having them
unnecessary evils on the place that would squirm round a man's legs and
feel of his hair and hide round corners and peek at him and whisper about
him. Then I changed foremen and Scott Humphrey, the new one, brought
three towheads with him of an age to cause Homer the anguish of the
damned, which they done on the first day they got here by playing that he
was a horse and other wild animals, and trying to pull the rest of his
hair out.

He