feeling glad when Molly went home on a visit,
and Grandma Dearborn said her rheumatism was so bad that she needed
his help. True, he had all sorts of tasks that he heartily
despised,--washing dishes, kneading dough, sweeping and dusting,--all
under the critical old lady's exacting supervision. But he preferred
even that to being sent off to school alone every day.

One evening, just about sundown, he was out in the corncrib, shelling
corn for the large flock of turkeys they were fattening for market. He
heard Grandma Dearborn go into the barn, where her husband was
milking. They were both a little deaf, and she spoke loud in order to
be heard above the noise of the milk pattering into the pail. She had
come out to look at one of the calves they intended selling.

"It's too bad," he heard her say, after a while. "Rindy has just set
her heart on him, but Arad, he thinks it's all foolishness to get such
a young one. He's willing to take one big enough to do the chores, but
he doesn't want to feed and keep what 'ud only be a care to 'em. He
always was closer'n the bark on a tree. After all, I'd hate to see the
little fellow go."

"Yes," was the answer, "he's a likely lad; but we're gettin' old,
mother, and one is about all we can do well by. Sometimes I think
maybe we've bargained for too much, tryin' to keep even _one_. So it's
best to let the little one go before we get to settin' sech store by
him that we can't."

A vague terror seized Steven as he realized who it was they were
talking about. He lay awake a long time that night smoothing Robin's
tangled curls, and crying at the thought of the motherless baby away
among strangers, with no one to snuggle him up warm or sing him to
sleep. Then there was another thought that wounded him deeply. Twist
it whichever way he might, he could construe Mr. Dearborn's last
remark to mean but one thing. They considered him a burden. How many
plans he made night after night before he fell asleep! He would take
Robin by the hand in the morning, and they would slip away and wander
off to the woods together. They could sleep in barns at night, and he
could stop at the farmhouses and do chores to pay for what they ate.
Then they need not be a trouble to any one. Maybe in the summer they
could find a nice dry cave to live in. Lots of people had lived that
way. Then in a few years he would be big enough to have a house of his
own. All sorts of improbable plans flocked into his little br