rickety, but folks used to come from all round to see ’em; they was curiosities if they wa’n’t nothin’ else, an’ gave him a name.” Mrs. Bickford paused a moment, with some geranium leaves in her hand, and seemed to suppress with difficulty a desire to speak even more freely. “He was a dreadful notional man,” she said at last, regretfully, and as if this fact were a poor substitute for what had just been in her mind. “I recollect one time he worked all through the early winter over my churn, an’ got it so it would go three quarters of an hour all of itself if you wound it up; an’ if you’ll believe it, he went an’ spent all that time for nothin’ when the cow was dry, an’ we was with difficulty borrowin’ a pint o’ milk a day somewheres in the neighborhood just to get along with.” Mrs. Bickford flushed with displeasure, and turned to look at her visitor. “Now what do you think of such a man as that, Miss Pendexter?” she asked. “Why, I don’t know but ’twas just as good for an invention,” answered Miss Pendexter timidly; but her friend looked doubtful, and did not appear to understand. “Then I asked him where it was, one day that spring when I’d got tired to death churnin’, an’ the butter wouldn’t come in a churn I’d had to borrow, and he’d gone an’ took ours all to pieces to get the works to make some other useless contrivance with. He had no sort of a business turn, but he was well meanin’, Mr. Wallis was, an’ full o’ divertin’ talk; they used to call him very good company. I see now that he never had no proper chance. I’ve always regretted Mr. Wallis,” said she who was now the widow Bickford. “I’m sure you always speak well of him,” said Miss Pendexter. “’Twas a pity he hadn’t got among good business men, who could push his inventions an’ do all the business part.” “I was left very poor an’ needy for them next few years,” said Mrs. Bickford mournfully; “but he never’d give up but what he should die worth his fifty thousand dollars. I don’t see now how I ever did get along them next few years without him; but there, I always managed to keep a pig, an’ sister Eliza gave me my potatoes, and I made out somehow. I could dig me a few greens, you know, in spring, and then ’twould come strawberry-time, and other berries a-follow-in’ on. I was always decent to go to meetin’ till within the last six months, an’ then I went in bad weather, when folks wouldn’t notice; but ’twas a rainy summer, an’ I managed to get considerable preachin’ after all. My clothes looked proper enough when ’twas a wet Sabbath. I often think o’ them pinched days now, when I’m left so comfortable by Mr. Bickford.” “Yes’m, you’ve everything to be thankful for,” said Miss Pendexter, who was as poor herself at that moment as her friend had ever been, and who could never dream of venturing upon the support and companionship of a pig. “Mr. Bickford was a very personable man,” she hastened to say, the confidences were so intimate and interesting.