One day I wuz jist gittin' reddy to cry. I could feel tears startin' in my hart, and my throte all hot and lumpy, thinkin' of ma and Danny an' all of them, and I noticed the teakettle just in time--it neaded skourin'. You bet I put a shine on it, and, of course, I couldn't dab tears on it and muss it up, so I had to wait. Mrs. M. duzn't talk to me. She has a morgage or a cancer I think botherin' her. Ma knowed a woman once, and everybuddy thot she was terrible cross cos she wouldn't talk at all hardly and when she died, they found she'd a tumult in her insides, and then you bet they felt good and sorry, when we're cross at home ma says it's not the strap we need, but a good dose of kastor oil or Seany and we git it too. I gess I got Bugsey's and Patsey's bed paid fer now. Now I'll do Teddy's and Jimmy's. This ain't a blot it's the liniment Mrs. McGuire gave me. I have it on me hands. I'm gittin on to be therteen soon. 13 is pretty old I gess. I'll soon turn the corner now and be lookin' 20 square in the face--I'll never be homesick then. I ain't lonesome now either--it's just sleep that's in my eyes smuggin them up. Jim Russell is offel good to go to town he doesn't seem to mind it a bit. Once I said I wisht I'd told Camilla to remind Jimmy to spit on his warts every day--he's offell careless, and Jim said he'd tell Camilla, and he often asks me if I want to tell Camilla anything, and it's away out of his rode to go round to Mrs. Francis house too. I like Jim you bet. CHAPTER XX TOM'S NEW VIEWPOINT Pearl was quite disappointed in Tom's appearance the morning after the party. Egbert always wore a glorified countenance after he had seen Edythe; but Tom looked sleepy and somewhat cross. He went to his work discontentedly. His mother's moroseness annoyed him. His father's hard face had never looked so forbidding to him as it did that morning. Mrs. Slater's hearty welcome, her good-natured motherly smiles, Mr. Slater's genial and kindly ways, contrasted sharply with his own home life, and it rankled in him. "It's dead easy for them Slater boys to be smart and good, too," he thought bitterly; "they are brought right up to it. They may not have much money, but look at the fun they have. George and Fred will be off to college soon, and it must be fun in the city,--they're dressed up all the time, ridin' round on street cars, and with no chores to do." The trees on the poplar bluff where he had made his toilet the evening before were beginning to show the approach of autumn, although there had been no frost. Pale yellow and rust coloured against the green of their hardier neighbours, they rippled their coin-like leaves in glad good-will as he drove past them on his way to the hayfield. The sun had risen red and angry, giving to every cloud in the sky a facing of gold, and long streamers shot up into the blue of the mid-heaven.