"Why, yes, nice enough; he is steady and works hard. Mr. Smith thinks he is quite a pattern; he has bought that little house where he lives, and fixed it all up with vines and things; but I should like him better if he didn't puff tobacco smoke into his wife's face when he talked with her. He doesn't begin to be so good a workman as your father, nor to know so much in a hundred ways. I think your father is a very nice-looking man when he is dressed up. He looks smart, and he is smart. Mr. Smith says there isn't a man in town who can do the sort of work that he can at the shop, and that he could get very high wages and be promoted and all that, if"-- Jerry stopped suddenly, and Nettie finished the sentence with a sigh. She too had passed the Burt cottage and admired its beauty and neatness. To think that Mr. Burt owned it, and was a younger man by fifteen years at least than her father--and was not so good a workman! then see how well he dressed his wife; and little Bobby Burt looked as neat and pretty in Sunday-school as the best of them. It was very hard that there must be such a difference in homes. If she could only live in a house like the Burt cottage, and have things nice about her as they did, and have her father and mother sit together and talk, as Mr. and Mrs. Burt did, she should be perfectly happy, Nettie told herself. Then she sprang up from the log and declared that she must not waste another minute of time; but that Jerry's plan was the best one she had ever heard, and she believed they could begin it. With this thought still in mind, after the dinner dishes were carefully cleared away, and her mother, returned from the day's ironing, had been treated to a piece of the apple dumpling warmed over for her, and had said it was as nice a bit as she ever tasted, Nettie began on the subject which had been in her thoughts all day: "What would you think of us young folks going into business?" "Going into business!" "Yes'm. Jerry and Norm and me. Jerry has a plan; he has been telling me about it this morning. It is nice if we can only carry it out; and I shouldn't wonder if we could. That is, if you think well of it." "I begin to think there isn't much that you and Jerry can't do, with Norm, or with anybody else, if you try; and you both appear to be ready to try to do all you can for everybody." Mrs. Decker's tone was so hearty and pleased, that you would not have known her for the same woman who looked forward dismally but a few weeks ago to Nettie's home-coming. Her heart had so warmed to the girl in her efforts for father and brother, that she was almost ready to agree to anything which she could have to propose. So Nettie, well pleased with this beginning, unfolded with great clearness and detail, Jerry's wonderful plan for not only catching Norm, but setting him up in business.