ng our very best families. It had me going again so
I plumb forgot my couple outside. I even forgot Wilbur, standing by the
box showing the lady how to sing.

"It come to the last--you know how it ends--'To kiss the cross,
sweetheart, to kiss the cross!' There was a rich and silent moment and I
says, 'If that Chet Timmins hasn't shown himself to be a regular male
teep by this time--' And here come Chet's voice, choking as usual, 'Yes,
paw switched to Durhams and Herefords over ten years ago--you see
Holsteins was too light; they don't carry the meat--' Honest! I'm
telling you what I heard. And yet when they come in I could see that
Chester had had tears in his eyes from that song, so still I didn't give
in, especially as Nettie herself looked very exalted, like she wasn't at
that minute giving two whoops in the bad place for the New Dawn.

[Illustration: "CHESTER JUST SET THERE WITH HIS MOUTH OPEN, LIKE
SOMETHING YOU SEE AT ONE OF THESE HERE AQUARIUMS"]

"Nettie made for Wilbur, who was pushing back his hair with a weak but
graceful sweep of the arm--it had got down before his face like a
portiere--and I took Chet into a corner and tried to get some of the
just wrath of God into his heart; but, my lands! You'd have said he
didn't know there was such a thing as a girl in the whole Kulanche
Valley. He didn't seem to hear me. He talked other matters.

"'Paw thinks,' he says, 'that he might manage to take them hundred and
fifty bull calves off your hands.' 'Oh, indeed!' I says. 'And does he
think of buying 'em--as is often done in the cattle business--or is he
merely aiming to do me a favour?' I was that mad at the poor worm, but
he never knew. 'Why, now, paw says "You tell Maw Pettengill I might be
willing to take 'em off her hands at fifty dollars a head,"' he says. 'I
should think he might be,' I says, 'but they ain't bothering my hands
the least little mite. I like to have 'em on my hands at anything less
than sixty a head,' I says. 'Your pa,' I went on, 'is the man that
started this here safety-first cry. Others may claim the honour, but it
belongs solely to him.' 'He never said anything about that,' says poor
Chester. 'He just said you was going to be short of range this summer.'
'Be that all too true, as it may be,' I says, 'but I still got my
business faculties--' And I was going on some more, but just then I seen
Nettie and Wilbur was awful thick over something he'd unwrapped from the
other package he'd brought.