er he died, I found 'em all put away most careful in a
box--a handkerchief and one kid glove, and a piece of ribbon about like
the one I took back to Barbara. He was flighty sometimes: constant
devotion to readin' had unsettled his mind.

"That brings me to what I wanted to say when I first started out.
I don't want you should load up your trunk with your pa's books to
the exclusion of your clothes, and I don't want you to spend your
evenin's readin'."

"I'm not apt to read very much, Mother, if I work in an office in the
daytime and go to law school at night."

[Sidenote: Ten Books Only]

"That's so, too, but there's Sundays. You can take any ten of your pa's
books that you like, but no more. I'll keep the rest here against the
time the train is blocked and the mails don't come through. I may get a
taste for your pa's books myself."

Roger did not think it likely, but he was too wise to say so.

"And I didn't tell you this before, but I've made it my business to go
and see the Judge and tell him how you saved my life at the expense of
Fido's. I don't know when I've seen a man so mad. I was goin' to suggest
that we get him another dog from some place, and land sakes! he clean
drove it out of my mind.

"I don't know how you've stood it, bein' there in the office with him,
and I told him so. He's got a red-headed boy from the Ridge in there
now, and I think maybe the Judge will get what's comin' to him before he
gets through. I've learned not to trifle with anybody what has red hair,
but seemin'ly the Judge ain't. It takes some folks a long time to learn.

"Barbara's goin' to the city, too, to spend the Winter with that Miss
Wynne in the cottage that's under the same roof with other cottages and
the bedrooms off the kitchen. I don't know how Barbara'll take to
washin' in the sink, when she's always had that rose-sprigged bowl and
pitcher of her ma's, but it's her business, not mine, and if she wants
to go, she can.

[Sidenote: "Me and Miriam"]

"Me and Miriam'll set together evenings and keep each other from bein'
lonesome. She ain't much more company than a cow, as far as talkin'
goes, but there's a feelin,' some way, about another person bein' in the
house, when the wind gets to howlin' down the chimney. We may arrange to
have supper together, once in a while, and in case of severe weather,
put the two fires goin' in one house, which ever's the warmest.

"I don't know what we shall do, for we ain't talked i