"Oh, I don't reckon Pappy cares about that," the boy said cheerfully. "He just wants to keep me out of mischief, and he said that lookin' at you was enough to sober a sot." Months dragged by. Bill and Jap worked more or less harmoniously. Once a day they fought; but it was fast becoming a mere function, kept up just for form. Ellis was doing better. He had set up housekeeping, since Jap came, in the back room of the little wooden structure that faced the Public Square, and housewives sent them real food once in a while. Once Ellis feared that Jap was going to quit him for the Golden Shore. It was on the occasion of Myrtilla Botts's wedding, when she baked the cakes herself, for practice, and her mother thoughtfully sent most of them to the Editor, to insure a big puff for Myrtilla. Ellis was afraid; but Jap, with the enthusiasm and inexperience of youth, took a chance. Bill was laid up with mumps, or the danger would have been lessened. As it was, it took all the doctors in town to keep Jap alive until they could uncurl him and straighten out his appendix, which appeared to be cased in wedding cake. This experience gave Jap an added distaste for the state of matrimony. "My dad allus said to keep away from marryin'," he moaned. "But how'd I know you'd ketch it from the eatin's?" The subscription list grew apace. There was a load of section ties, two bushel of turnips and six pumpkins paid in November. Bill and Jap went hunting once a week, so the larder grew beyond sardines. Jap acquired a hatred of turnips and pumpkins that was in after years almost a mania. At Christmas, Kelly Jones brought in a barrel of sorghum, "to sweeten 'em," he guffawed. Jap had grown to manhood before he wholly forgave that pleasantry. It was a hard winter. Everybody said so, and when Jap gazed at Ellis across the turnips and sorghum of those weary months, he said he believed it. "Shame on you," rebuked Ellis, gulping his turnips with haste. "Think of the wretched people who would be glad to get this food." "Do you know any of their addresses?" asked Jap abruptly. "Because I can't imagine anybody happy on turnips and sorghum. I'd be willin' to trade my wretched for theirn." Kelly said that Jap would be fat as butter if he ate plenty of molasses, and this helped at first; but when the grass came, he begged Ellis to cook it for a change. When George Thomas came in, one blustery March day, to say that if the turnips were all gone, he would bring in some more, Ellis pied Judge Bowers's speech on the duties of the Village Fathers to the alleys, when he saw the malignant look that Jap cast upon the cheery farmer.