ato
seeds in that, I'll have you know. Oh, yes, government seeds. Somebody
sends 'em, I don't know who. Congressman, I guess, whoever he is. I
don't pretend to keep track of 'em. And say. When was this watered last?
There it is. Unless I stand over you every minute--My land! If there's
anything done about this house I've got to do it.

Between the days when it can't make up its mind whether to snow or to
rain, and tries to do both at once, comes a day when it is warm enough
(almost) to go without an overcoat. The Sunday following you can hardly
hear what the preacher has to say for the whooping and barking. The
choir members have cough drops in their cheeks when they stand up to
sing, and everybody stops in at the drug store with: "Say, Doc, what's
good for a cold?"

Eggs have come down. Yesterday they were nine for a quarter; to-day
they're ten. Gildersleeve wants a dollar for a setting of eggs, but
he'll let you have the same number of eggs for thirty cents if you'll
wait till he can run a needle into each one. So afraid you'll raise
chickens of your own.

Excited groups gather about rude circles scratched in the mud, and there
is talk of "pureys," and "reals," and "aggies," and "commies," and "fen
dubs!" There is a rich click about the bulging pockets of the boys, and
every so often in school time something drops on the floor and rolls
noisily across the room. When Miss Daniels asks: "Who did that?" the
boys all look so astonished. Who did what, pray tell? And when she picks
up a marble and inquires: "Whose is this?" nobody can possibly imagine
whose it might be, least of all the boy whose most highly-prized shooter
it is. At this season of the year, too, there is much serious talk as
to the exceeding sinfulness of "playing for keeps." The little boys, in
whose thumbs lingers the weakness of the arboreal ape, their ancestor,
and who "poke" their marbles, drink in eagerly the doctrine that when
you win a marble you ought to give it back, but the hard-eyed fellows,
who can plunk it every time, sit there and let it go in one ear and out
the other, there being a hole drilled through expressly for the purpose.
What? Give up the rewards of skill? Ah, g'wan!

The girls, even to those who have begun to turn their hair up under, are
turning the rope and dismally chanting: "All in together, pigs in the
meadow, nineteen twenty, leave the rope empty," or whatever the rune is.

It won't be long now. It won't be long.

"F