best, I presume, but what can a young thing like you understand?
However, they's one thing"----

"Well, what's that?" as Ellen paused abruptly.

"Oh nothing. I was just thinking you could make anybody do anything you
want 'em to, and that goes a good way. Well, well, I s'pose there is
_some_ advantage in being young!"

CHAPTER VII.

THE HAPGOODS AND NATE.

The spring was backward that year, and on its first evening of real
softness and beauty the houses of Littleton seemed turned
wrong-side-out, like a stocking-bag, upon the streets. Every door-step
had its occupants, every fence rail its leaning groups (though fences
were scarce in Littleton), and the left-overs gathered in and around the
saloon, familiarly known as Lon's. Among the loungers on its broad,
unroofed platform, sat two men, tilted back in wooden armchairs, talking
in that slow, desultory fashion common among those who use hands more
than tongues in their battle with life.

"Yes," drawled one, as he cut off a generous slice from the cake of
fine-cut in his hands, "yes, I'm not saying but the town'll look better
when it's done, but what's it being done for? That's what I want to
know. 'Twon't make the plant any more valuable, will it?"

"It orter," was the response as the other knocked the ashes from his
black pipe, blew through its stem, and proceeded to fill it from a dirty
little bag drawn from his ragged coat pocket. "Good houses is better'n
shanties, ain't they?"

"Of course they're better, but that's just it. We can't none of us pay
any more rent than we're payin' now; so what'll he do about it?"

"Who?"

"The new man that owns it--young Early, ain't it?"

"Oh, the son; yes. It's just half way possible he thinks we ought to
have something better'n pig-styes to live in!"

"Well, he isn't any Early then! I've see the old man, and I know.
Straight's a glass rod, and not caring shucks for anything but his
money. He'd grind a feller down to biled-tater parings, if he could."

It was Lucy's father just speaking, and his name of William Hapgood had
been shortened to Bill among the villagers, who seemed to have little
use for family cognomens where family pride was not a failing. He was a
small man with a rasping voice and sharp nose, while the bristling
growth about his chin was red and his hair brown. All this denoted
temper, but not the deep and lasting kind; rather the flash-in-the-pan
sort, common enough among shrewish women, and o