"Everybody in Riverboro is minus a man, and everybody needs a little help. There's plenty to do here, for I live alone, but I have little money to spend on keeping up the place." The young man glanced in at the door with a boyish sort of informality and asked: "Do you keep a dairy farm?" Jenny laughed outright, and kept on laughing as she answered: "No wonder you asked, but I shouldn't set milk on the floor and it's water in the pans. It's a water farm!" The laughter was mutual now, and the audacious youth, moving to the lower step and glancing upward, said: "I see you're a little shy on shingles?" "Just a trifle, but I'm long on milk pans!" "They told me you were a first-class farmer but--er--a little handicapped on outside work." Jenny leaned against the door-frame and stroked her crutch with a smile. "Footicapped would be a better word," she said. "Are you a stranger in Riverboro? Won't you rest a moment? Make your way through the milk pans to the rocking chair. I do need a little help in getting my winter wood in." "You'll require a lot of wood unless you get a tight roof over your head," said the stranger. "I'm a Western farmer's son, or at least I was; but my mother and father died while I was in France and I'm alone in the world." "France?" echoed Jenny, with a new glance in her eye and a new tone in her voice. "Yes, but we'll cut that out! I landed in Boston the other day and now I'm just kind of 'adventuring' till I get my 'peace legs' on." "You couldn't have come to a worse place than Riverboro. There hasn't been an adventure here in a hundred years." "I don't know about that! I've only been in town half an hour and I've seen a water farm and a lady that runs it to the Queen's taste!" Jenny laughed again; the sweetest, most tuneful laugh in the world; one that she seldom used nowadays but had kept over from her long-ago youth. What a droll stranger! And how much more interesting he would be in the intervals of sawing and splitting wood, than old George Gibson. "It is too ridiculous that you should have seen the milk pans and noticed the shingles. I am going to have the roof fixed next spring if I live. Father saved up money for the stock but--but, I had to use it in a long illness." "Yes, yes!" interrupted the stranger. "It beats all how that runs through life! You save up money for shingles and then you can't get enough more to put 'em on." "I'm nearly ready for the second time," Jenny's tone was cheerful and incisive, "but I don't think I have quite enough to pay for labor. Besides, you couldn't, I mean you wouldn't--shingle--could you?"