"Sure I would, and could! You're strong on the subjunctive, aren't you? You've noticed I'm handicapped (I don't have to invent a word, it's all right for my case!). But just you wait and see what I can do with the substitute presented me by the U.S.A.! I'm going to have something more stylish later on, but I don't believe it will serve me any better; you see it's only my left arm!" Jenny stopped her ears. "Don't tell me you've read 'Pollyanna' and are glad it isn't your right arm!" "Sure I'm glad! Who wouldn't be? Who's Pollyanna?" "She's a girl in a book who's always glad that things aren't any worse." "All right for Polly! More power to her elbow! Now I'm by no means dead broke and I've got back-pay coming to me from Washington, when they get 'round to it. But I want to train myself to work at anything that comes. If I can't make good I'll go to a vocational school, but I want to harden myself first." "My roof in November would be a good place for that!" said Jenny contemplatively. "What wages do you ask?" "Half what the other men get around here, because I'm not a skilled worker at present. Now if you've got a ladder on the premises I can get up and tear off the old shingles while you negotiate for the new ones. Going to buy first quality cedars?" Jenny grew red and then white, for her memory flashed back, and by an odd trick she remembered her father's injunction to "stiperlate," a word that was to be used in far more romantic circumstances. "Can't manage first quality; seconds will have to do," she said, with some embarrassment. "O.K. I've had nothing but 'seconds' all my life. Sometimes I wonder I didn't have a second wife." "Why didn't you?" The question suddenly popped out of Jenny's mouth without any warning. "Because I never had a first! Ha! ha!" (He certainly was the most unusual young man she had ever met and the most informal on the occasion of a first call. She felt as if she'd been to high-school and singing-school and dancing-school with him!) The stranger rose from his chair. "I'll 'lime' the 'seconds' for you myself to save expense. Want me to get them for you, because I know a shingle when I see it and maybe you don't? I'll go in to the village, get a boarding-place, and come back after lunch for a half-day's work." "Thank you--that will be very kind." "I'll pick up the milk pans and empty 'em for you, first. Poor old things! They don't know they're going out of business! Let me look at your ladder, please. A man that works with a woman's farming implements ought to carry a big life insurance!" Jenny laughed again, joyously. Then, entirely forgetting decorum, she wiped her eyes with her apron and said, "If I only knew what your wages were going to be I'd raise them, you are so funny! The ladder is in the shed. I think it's all right."