ow dis yeah's a mighty sick li'l creatur'! Whoebah she be she's
done fotched a high fevah wid her, an' I'se gwine put her to baid
right now!"

Illness was always enough to enlist the old nurse's deepest interest
and she had no further reproof for the delayed breakfasts or Ephraim's
behavior.

There followed a morning full of business for all. Jim Barlow and old
Hans, with some grumbling assistance from the "roomatical" Ephraim,
whose "misery" Dinah assured him had been aggravated by sleeping on a
cold leather lounge instead of in his own feather-bed--these three
spent the morning in clearing away the fallen tree, while a carpenter
from the town repaired the injured doorway.

When Dorothy approached Jim, intending to speak freely of her
suspicions about the lost money, he cut her short by remarking:

"What silliness! Course, it isn't really lost. You've just mislaid it,
that's all, an' forgot. I do that, time an' again. Put something away
so careful 't I can't find it for ever so long. You'll remember after
a spell, and say, Dolly! I won't be able to write that telegram to
Mabel Bruce. I've got no time to bother with a parcel o' girls. If I
don't keep a nudgin' them two old men they won't do a decent axe's
stroke. They spend all their time complainin' of their j'ints!"

"Well, why don't you get a regular woodman to chop it up, then?"

"An' waste Mrs. Calvert's good money, whilst there's a lot of idlers
on her premises, eatin' her out of house and home? I guess not. I'd
save for her quicker'n I would for myself, an' that's saying
considerable. I'm no eye-servant, I'm not."

"Huh! You're one mighty stubborn boy! And I don't think my darling
Aunt Betty would hesitate to pay one extra day's help. I've heard her
say that she disliked amateur labor. She likes professional skill,"
returned the girl, with decision.

James Barlow laughed.

"I reckon, Dolly C., that you've forgot the days when you and I were
on Miranda Stott's truck-farm; when I cut firewood by the cord and you
sat on the logs an' taught me how to spell. 'Twouldn't do for me to
claim I can't split up one tree; and this one'll be as neat a job as
you ever see, time I've done with it. Trot along and write your own
telegrams; or get that Starky to do it for you. Ha, ha! He thought he
could saw wood, himself. Said he learned it campin' out; but the first
blow he struck he hit his own toes and blamed it on the axe being too
heavy. Trot along with him, girlie