oliday, or some boy had had a
hard time with sickness or what not; it was a treat rarely given, and
the more prized for that. But Yvon and I might slide as much as we
pleased. "Keep him cheerful, Jakey!" the dear old man would say. "Let
him kibobble all he's a mind to! I had a brother once was looney, and we
kep' him happy all his life long, jest lettin' him stay a child, as the
Lord intended. Six foot eight he stood, and weighed four hundred
pounds."

And when the boy was tired of playing we would sit down together, and
call to Ham to come up and talk; for even better than sliding, Yvon
loved to hear his cousin talk. You can take the picture into your mind,
Melody, my dear. The light dim and white, as I have told you, and very
soft, falling upon rows and rows of full sacks, ranged like soldiers;
the great white miller sitting with his back against one of these, and
his legs reaching anywhere,--one would not limit the distance; and
running all about him, without fear, or often indeed marking him in any
way, a multitude of little birds, sparrows they were, who spent most of
their life here among the meal-sacks. Sometimes they hopped on his
shoulder, or ran over his head, but they never minded his talking, and
he sat still, not liking to disturb them. It was a pretty sight of
extremes in bulk, and in nature too; for while Ham was afraid to move,
for fear of troubling them, they would bustle up to him and cock their
heads, and look him in the eye as if they said, "Come on, and show me
which is the biggest!"

There you see him, my dear; and opposite to him you might see a great
mound or heap of corn that shone yellow as gold. "_Le Mont d'Or_," Yvon
called it; and nothing would do but he must sit on this, lifted high
above us, yet sliding down every now and then, and climbing up again,
with the yellow grains slipping away under him, smooth and bright as
pebbles on the shore. And for myself, I was now here and now there, as I
found it more comfortable, being at home in every part of the friendly
place.

How we talked! Ham was mostly a silent fellow; but he grew to love the
lad so that the strings of his tongue were loosened as they had never
been before. His woman, too (as we say in those parts, Melody; wife is
the more genteel expression, but I never heard Ham use it. My father, on
the other hand, never said anything else; a difference in the fineness
of ear, my dear, I have always supposed),--his woman, I say, or wife,