Then Barbara
added her persuasions to those of Captain Sam and his daughter and
he gave in.

"If you don't go, Uncle Jed," asserted Babbie, "we're all goin' to
be awfully disappointed, 'specially me and Petunia--and Mamma--and
Uncle Charlie."

"Oh, then the rest of you folks won't care, I presume likely?"

Babbie thought it over. "Why, there aren't any more of us," she
said. "Oh, I see! You're joking again, aren't you, Uncle Jed?
'Most everybody I know laughs when they make jokes, but you don't,
you look as if you were going to cry. That's why I don't laugh
sometimes right off," she explained, politely. "If you was really
feeling so bad it wouldn't be nice to laugh, you know."

Jed laughed then, himself. "So Petunia would feel bad if I didn't
go to Sam's, would she?" he inquired.

"Yes," solemnly. "She told me she shouldn't eat one single thing
if you didn't go. She's a very high-strung child."

That settled it. Jed argued that Petunia must on no account be
strung higher than she was and consented to dine at the
Hunniwells'.

The day before Thanksgiving brought another visitor to the windmill
shop, one as welcome as he was unexpected. Jed, hearing the door
to the stock room open, shouted "Come in" from his seat at the
workbench in the inner room. When his summons was obeyed he looked
up to see a khaki-clad figure advancing with extended hand.

"Why, hello, Major!" he exclaimed. "I'm real glad to-- Eh,
'tain't Major Grover, is it? Who-- Why, Leander Babbitt! Well,
well, well!"

Young Babbitt was straight and square-shouldered and brown.
Military training and life at Camp Devens had wrought the miracle
in his case which it works in so many. Jed found it hard to
recognize the stoop-shouldered son of the hardware dealer in the
spruce young soldier before him. When he complimented Leander upon
the improvement the latter disclaimed any credit.

"Thank the drill master second and yourself first, Jed," he said.
"They'll make a man of a fellow up there at Ayer if he'll give 'em
half a chance. Probably I shouldn't have had the chance if it
hadn't been for you. You were the one who really put me up to
enlisting."

Jed refused to listen. "Can't make a man out of a punkinhead," he
asserted. "If you hadn't had the right stuff in you, Leander,
drill masters nor nobody else could have fetched it out. How do
you like belongin' to Uncle Sam?"

Young Babbitt liked it and said so. "I feel as if I