"Well, I believe he has; but then, he doesn't like new folks or new things, I reckon. There's a saying that his hatred of changes keeps him from ever changing his clothes." Christopher came in at the moment, and with a slight bow to Carraway, slipped into his place. "What's Jim Weatherby chopping up that log for?" he asked, glancing in the direction of the ringing strokes. Cynthia looked at him almost grimly, and there was a contraction of the muscles about her determined mouth. "Ask Lila," she responded quietly. As Christopher's questioning gaze turned to her, Lila flushed rose-pink and played nervously with the breadcrumbs on the table. "He said he had nothing else to do," she answered, with an effort, "and he knew you were so busy--that was all." "Well, he's a first rate fellow," commented Christopher, as he reached for the pitcher of buttermilk, "but I don't see what makes him so anxious to do my work." "Oh, that's Jim's way, you know," put in Tucker with his offhand kindliness. "He's the sort of old maid who would undertake to straighten the wilderness if he could get the job. Why, I actually found him once chopping off dead boughs in the woods, and when I laughed he excused himself by saying that he couldn't bear to see trees look so scraggy." As he talked, his pleasant pale blue eyes twinkled with humour, and his full double chin shook over his shirt of common calico. He had grown very large from his long inaction, and it was with a perceptible effort that he moved himself upon his slender crutches. Yet despite his maimed and suffering body he was dressed with a scrupulous neatness which was almost like an air of elegance. As he chatted on easily, Carraway forgot, in listening to him, the harrowing details in the midst of which he sat--forgot the overheated, smoky kitchen, the common pine table with its broken china, and the sullen young savage whom he faced. For Christopher was eating his dinner hurriedly, staring at his plate in a moodiness which he did not take the trouble to conceal. With all the youthful beauty of his face, there was a boorishness in his ill-humour which in a less commanding figure would have been repellent--an evident pride in the sincerity of the scowl upon his brow. When his meal was over he rose with a muttered excuse and went out into the yard, where a few minutes afterward Carraway was bold enough to follow him.