“Drat it!” snarled her husband, sucking a thumb he had just smashed with his hammer. “I admit it all right. The Pass is gettin’ plumb wuthless to live in. Psalm singin’, and preachin’, and singin’ meetings, and sech. Huh! Parson wants me to come to Bible class.” After all he said it with some pride. Sam had, as he expressed it, “a sneakin’ likin’” for the parson. But he was determined not to show that this was so before Mother Tubbs. “Ain’t you glad to live less like a savage—more decent and civilized like—than you useter, Sam Tubbs?” demanded the old woman. “I was satisfied as I was,” grunted her husband. “I ain’t one o’ them that’s always wantin’ change and somethin’ new. If I had been, I’d picked me a new woman before now.” “The pickin’ ain’t very good in Canyon Pass,” rejoined Mother Tubbs complacently. “Them that’s got husbands don’t want to exchange. ’Twould be like jumpin’ out of the skillet onto the coals. Them women that ain’t got nary man are well content, I reckon, to get on without one if you, Sam Tubbs, are the only hope they got.” “Huh!” Nell’s sweet, clear voice floated down from the upper chamber. In accents that caressed, she sang an old song which she had found in Betty Hunt’s music, arranged for solo use. “Hear that child, Sam!” whispered the old woman, wiping her eyes when the pleading verse was finished. “Ain’t that heaven-born?” “Huh!” said Sam, but in truth a little doubtfully. “I never considered our Nell as bein’ pertic’lar angelic. No ma’am! Not before.” “She’s as good as any angel,” declared Mother Tubbs with conviction. “Only she’s flighty. Or useter be. And if she’d just go and sing them songs at meetin’, Canyon Pass would learn for once just what good singin’ is.” “I dunno but you’re right, old woman,” said Sam softly, as the voice from above took up the song again. “I’ve heard Nell Blossom sing many a time before; but it never so sort o’ caught in muh cogs as that song does. But she can’t sing them kind o’ tunes in Colorado Brown’s or the Grub Stake.” “Hush, Sam! Don’t mention it!” whispered his wife. “I hope to the Lord she won’t never hafter work in them places again.” “Huh! How’s she going to live?” asked the startled Sam. “You leave it to Parson Hunt,” declared Mother Tubbs in the same secretive way, “and Nell Blossom won’t never no more hafter sing for her livin’.” Sam stared. His bald head flushed as his eyes began to twinkle and the knowing grin wreathed his sunken lips. He suddenly burst into a cackle of delight. “D’ye mean it? The parson? By mighty! So he’s willin’ to go the way of all flesh, is he? Nell needn’t work no more for her livin’ if she don’t want?” “You poor fool,” scornfully said his wife, holding up one of his enormous blue yarn socks with a gaping hole in the heel, “if the parson is as hard on his socks as you are, Sam Tubbs, Nell will have her work cut out for her—sure as sure!”