It does not matter. My point is that, in the boy, as later in the man into whom the boy is to grow, there are two beings, each distinct, each having its own life and each of importance to the man himself. The boy who lives in the world of fact is to help his father put a priming coat on a new house built by a prosperous Ohio farmer. In my day we used a dirty yellow ochre for the purpose. The color satisfied no sensual part of myself. How I hated it! It was used because it was cheap and later was to be covered up, buried away out of sight. Ugly colors, buried away out of sight, have a way of remaining always in sight in the consciousness of the painter who has spread them. * * * * * In the hayloft the fat boy was awake now. Darkness was coming fast and he must bestir himself, must if possible escape the wrath of his father for the day wasted in entertaining me. He crawled up out of his own hole and, reaching down, put a fat hand on my shoulder and shook me. He had a plan for his own escape which he whispered to me as my head came up into sight in the dim evening light in the loft. He was an only son and his mother was fond of him--she would even lie for him. Now he would creep away unseen to the house and frankly tell his mother he has been fooling about with me all day long. She would scold a little but, after a time, when his father came into the house for supper and when in harsh tones he asked what the boy had been doing, the gentle little lie would come. “It won’t really be a lie,” the fat boy declared stoutly, defending the virtue of his mother. “Do you expect me to do all the housework and the churning as well?” the farm woman would ask her husband sharply. She, it seemed, was a person of understanding and did not expect a boy to do a man’s work all the time. “You’d think dad never was a kid,” he whispered to me. “He works all the time and he wants me to work all the time too. I wouldn’t never have no fun if it wasn’t for ma. Gee, I only wish I had a dad like your’n. He’s just like a kid himself, isn’t he now?” In the gathering darkness the farm boy and I crept down a ladder to the floor of the barn and he ran away to the farmhouse, his feet making no sound in the soft mud of the farmyard. The rain persisted and the night would be cold. In another part of the barn the farmer was doing his evening chores, assisted by father--always the accommodating one--who held the lantern and ran to get ears of corn to throw into the horses’ feed-boxes. I could hear his voice, calling cheerfully. Already he knew all the farm horses by name and spoke of them familiarly. “How many ears for old Frank? Does Topsy get five ears too?”