“Three of us pretty much of a stripe,” sighed the showman. “Each of us with an out of some kind. Nothin’ to be proud of, any of us. Can’t expect much else, maybe! I tell ye, Sime, I know how you felt about the school bus’ness. After they folded mother’s hands--and I can see ’em folded now just as I did when I tiptoed into the settin’-room where they’d laid her out--I didn’t have no more jelly tarts to set out on the desk when I opened my dinner-pail at school, and I used to stay in at recess so that the girls couldn’t see the holes in the seat of my pants.” He stood and looked away and fingered the folds of skin on his wrinkled neck as though there were an ache there. “I’m glad to believe,” he said softly and brokenly, “that God ain’t mean enough to let dead mothers ever know how their little gaffers get along after their mother hands are folded and they can’t ’tend and do any longer.” After a little time he turned to the wife, and his eyes were wet. “I ain’t all hard spots, sissy,” he affirmed impulsively. “Most often it’s the softest places that have the hardest calluses over ’em. I’m a pretty soft old fool, myself. Most think I ain’t, but I am. I’ve made my mistakes and they was bad ones. Sime, there, has made just as bad ones as me. You’ve made yours, sissy, but don’t make any more--don’t!” He patted her cheek with a tenderness that no one ever saw before in Hiram Look. “We’ve sort of found out each other all at once. Let’s call this place here ‘Orphan Hill’ and always remember it. Let’s kind of brace from now on. We can’t be angels, none of us. We’ve been too much handicapped. But we can brace!” He didn’t seem to dare to trust himself to talk any longer, but closed the doors on the girl and called to her that she must be very quiet while the van stood in the farmer’s yard, explaining that he would secure food for her. Then he perched himself beside Peak and drove on, each busy with his own thoughts. The woman of the house promptly appeared at the door when the van swung into the yard. “Well, it’s best for you that you did stop on your way back,” she snapped. “You never paid a single mite of attention to me when you went past this morning, but kept goin’ like the mill-tail of Tophet. I said to my husband that peddlers’ teams was gettin’ pretty stuck up, prancin’ past with four horses and not payin’ no attention when, a lady comes to the door sacking a bag of rags. Now here they be. Have you got your st’ilyards? I suppose you have and that you cheat as much as----” “That woman seems to be the open-faced, self-windin’ kind,” Hiram growled to Peak through the corner of his mouth. Then he interrupted her.