such brightness in her
eyes, and so much snap and spunk in her system that Jake Tuttle up and
married her two months after she came home. And he's been happy ever
since for in spite of her school-teaching handicap Susie has turned out
to be a born cook and housewife. And as if to make up to her those
twenty colorless years Providence sent Susie twin boys at the end of
her first year and twin girls at the end of the third.

This blossoming out of little drab Susie Melton was a shock to Green
Valley. But Grandma Wentworth wasn't a mite surprised and said she
knew that Susie would come into her own some day. As for Jake, he is
so in love with his rosy little wife and his four good-looking children
that he just goes on raising bumper crops without hardly knowing how he
does it. And he says he doesn't hanker much after heaven; that home is
plenty good enough for him. And when he goes to town Jake takes care
to tie his team in front of Billy Evans' place instead of the hotel.

"Not that I can't take a drink or two and stop," he explained to Billy,
"but I have good cider and buttermilk and Susie's grape juice to home
and the smartest of us ain't any too wise while we stand beside a bar.
And I'd ruther go home dead than go back to Susie and the children the
least bit silly with liquor. When the Almighty sends a man like me a
family like mine He's got something in His mind and I ain't agoing to
spoil things just for a drink or two of slops."

So on rainy days Billy's office is the gathering place for such men as
find the atmosphere in the hotel and blacksmith shop a little too
fragrantly spirited for their eventual domestic happiness.

Not that Billy is a teetotaler. No, indeed. He has his drink whenever
he wants it. And he good-naturedly permits such staggering wretches as
the hotel refuses to accommodate to sleep it off in his barns. And he
is the only man in Green Valley who ever seriously hired Hank Lolly and
kept him sober twelve hours at a stretch. The other business men make
considerable fun of Billy's hired help; the trifling boys he hires,
boys that everybody else has tried and sent packing. Billy says
nothing though he did explain fully to Grandma Wentworth once.

"You see it's like this, Grandma. I ain't fixed to pay fancy wages
just yet and those kids that everybody runs down ought to be off the
streets doing something. Of course some of them _are_ trifling. But I
ain't such a stickler for sharp-