"I did my best for them. I kept them at their books, Sundays and rainy days, and winter evenings; and they were smart boys and learnt well. They were good boys and pleasant-natured, taking after their mother, and I took comfort with them in many ways. They were good boys to work too. There wasn't a lazy bone in one of them; and, while they did the work that was expected of them, everything went well between them and their father. He let them pretty much alone at other times. His heart was set on just one thing, and that was making money, and the more he got the more he wanted. He didn't spare himself, and he didn't spare any one else, if the chance to make a dollar came along. "Jim was doing the work of a man before he was fifteen; and every year brought more to be done, for more land was taken up as fast as it could be paid for. Ezra did have wonderful success. After the narrow stony fields of the old place, it was a sight to see the scores of acres of wheat growing so full and strong. It was threshed right there on the ground, and sometimes it was sold there; and if he had only been content with moderate success, he might have been living now, and well-to-do. "I blame myself when I think of those times--the times that came after the first three years. I think maybe, if I had done differently, things might have turned out differently for us all. In this third spring my Eunice was born--my only baby, and while she stayed with us she made the world a better place for us all. The boys did think everything of her, and her father too. But she died of croup. If we had had a doctor near us, or if I had known better how to deal with it, she might have lived, I thought, and that made it very hard to bear. Ezra felt so about it too, and we had a dark winter. "But spring came, and the work had to be done. We couldn't get all the help we wanted; and from daylight till dark Jim and his brothers had to be in the fields. Even little Davie had his share to do; and, though they were not inclined to shirk their work, it was hard for them, and they did sometimes complain. I complained for them, but I might just as well have held my tongue, and I did after awhile. They grew fast. Jim was as tall as his father when he was sixteen, and if he had had any chance he would have been a strong man in a few years. But he was slim and stooping, and had little flesh on his bones, and I worried about him a good deal; and one day I asked his father how many acres of wheat he supposed it would take to pay for the life and health of a boy like Jim. "`He's _my_ boy,' said he, `and not yours, and it ain't worth while for you to make the calculation. I know all about it.'