ngs, death and babies that some days he just gets tired of
being a serious God and shuffles things up for a joke. And, mark me,
Roger, that boy, Billy Evans, is just one of God's tender jokes. If
only people would see that and laugh.

"Now, Billy has no money sense, no business ability. That's what the
real business men like George Hoskins and all the old blessed Solomons
at Uncle Tony's say. Yet Billy is making money. His business is
growing just because without knowing it Billy has got hold of the
biggest force in the world to run his business. He's just using
love,--plain, old-fashioned love,--and love is making money for Billy.
He's picked out of the very gutters all the human waste and rubbish
that the others, the wise business men, threw there and with the town's
worst drunkard and half a dozen mistreated, misborn, misunderstood boys
he's playing the business game and winning. He's got the knack of
making his help feel like partners and he's so square and sensible in
his dealings with them that they are all ready to die for him. Now if
that isn't the greatest kind of a business gift I want to know.

"And every time I think of smiling, untidy Billy Evans with a pretty
wife as neat as wax, living in a house that she has made as sweet and
pretty as a picture--well--I just laugh. Nobody but God could have
arranged things and balanced them up like that. Talk about any of us
improving things in this world! If we'd only learn to mind our own
business as well as God minds His."

But very few besides Grandma Wentworth understood Billy and his livery
barn. Even Joe Baldwin failed to see just what Billy was doing in his
droll, unconscious, warm-hearted way. Still Joe liked Billy. In fact,
everybody liked Billy. And he was welcomed everywhere and nowhere more
than in George Hoskins' blacksmith shop.

Next to the bank building George Hoskins was considered the most solid
thing in town. He was the brawny blacksmith and people said a very
rich man. He was big in every way. Big in body, big in temper, big in
his friendships, big in his drinks. He was indeed so big a man that he
did not know how to be mean or little in any way. He did not know his
own great strength nor think much of the weakness of his fellows. His
grand proportions and great simplicity were what attracted men to him.
Women did not know and so could not like him.

To them George Hoskins was a great, grimy ogre. George, big in all
things