and to his heavy boots, which were caked with manure from the stables. The first time Dorinda remembered his taking her on his knee, the strong smell of his blue jeans overalls had frightened her to tears, and she had struggled and screamed. "I reckon my hands are too rough," he had said timidly, and after that he had never tried to lift her again. But whenever she thought of him now, his hands, gnarled, twisted, and earth-stained like the vigorous roots of a tree, and that penetrating briny smell, were the first things she remembered. His image was embalmed in that stale odour of the farm as in a preserving fluid. "It's snowing faster," Dorinda said, "but it doesn't stay on the ground." Bending over her father, she covered the corn pone on his plate with brown gravy. "Maybe it will be clear again by to-morrow," she went on smoothly. "It's time spring was beginning." Joshua's hand, which no amount of scrubbing could free front stain, closed with a heavy grip on the handle of his knife. "This brown gravy cert'n'y does taste good, honey," he said. "Yo' Ma's made out mighty well with no milk or butter." A deep tenderness pervaded Dorinda's heart, and this tenderness was but a single wave of the emotion that flooded her being. "Poor Pa," she thought, "he has never known anything but work." Oh, how splendid life was and how hard! Aloud, she said, "I've saved up enough money to buy a cow in May. After I help you with the taxed and the interest on the mortgage, I'll still have enough left for the cow. Rose Emily says old Doctor Greylock will sell us his Blossom!" "Then we can have butter and buttermilk with the ash cake!" exclaimed Rufus.