Jimmie, whose eyes still had their trick of watching for the details of every picture, noticed an angry twitching of the vine that screened a window in the wing of the post office building, where, probably, Mr. Gamblin lived. He deduced that there was a woman behind that vine listening. And the woman was getting angry. "Oh, that sounds so good!" Augusta enthused immediately. "You know, we've only got a little money. And it has to last. You know if we had a plenty we wouldn't have to think or worry at all. But then, if we had money it would be something else." "Golly! You're right," the old man agreed with a hearty slap on his knee. "And the fryin' pan can't be quite so hot as the fire anyway. So if you can only just--" "Jeth-_nye_-yah! You left the 'lasses runnin'!" Mr. Gamblin jumped into the air as though at the crack of a whip. He came down nimbly on his feet and started a bolt for the door of the post office. He took, however, only a few hurried steps. Then he stopped short with a thud and an angry grunt. He shook himself viciously like an enraged and baffled bull, and it seemed that he was about to roar. Jimmie knew at once that the woman behind the screen of vines had played a ruse--probably an old one--upon the old gentleman, to make him break off an interesting conversation. Augusta, not understanding at all, and wishing to go on with the discussion, said helpfully: "But I'm sure you didn't touch the molasses at all." Jimmie put his hand warningly upon her arm. Mr. Gamblin did not appear to hear her. He was standing with his legs braced wide apart. His mild mannered spectacles which seemed to have no relations whatever with his eyes stood out at a truculent angle near the end of his nose. His face and neck were very red and he had the look of a man fighting for breath. "Forty year!" he muttered belligerently, "just like a post in the mud! An' sorry every minute!" Then he shook himself and strode stubbornly back to the wagon, placed his foot solidly where it had before rested on the hub of the wheel, and renewed his conversation in a loud and defiant tone. "Yessum, there's as good air right 'round here as there is anywhere, and more of it than there is in most places." Jimmie wondered sympathetically how many times in the forty years the old man had been called away from some interesting doing by that false alarm about the molasses. "And what's a little cough anyway?" the old man boomed on resonantly. "Why I had a tarnation mean cough one time, my own self, long about twenty years ago, I figure it was, or twenty-five. Come on in hayin' time and hung 'round till the first frost. That's the cure. The first nip of the dry frost just picks it right out. And there you are, sound as a trivet. Just like a post in the mud!" "I'm sure you are right," said Augusta. "And I know that Jimmie and I are both tired of drifting. I don't think we will go much farther."