"Well, I don't see why he need feel so bad," the other man said. "Nobody minds stealin' from the railways or the elevator men. They'd steal the coppers off a dead man's eyes--eh, what? But where Bud ever got such notions of honesty, I don't know--search me. It's a fine thing to be honest, but it's well to have it under control. Now, there's some kind of sharp tricks I don't hold with. They say that Mrs. George Steadman sold a seven-pound stone in the middle of a crock of butter to Mason here some years ago. She thought he'd ship it away to Winnipeg and nobody'd ever know; but as sure as you're born, when she got home she found it in the middle of her box of tea. He paid her twenty-five cents a pound for it, but, by golly! she paid him fifty cents a pound for it back. Now, I don't hold with that--it was too risky a deal for me. This Mason's a sharp one, I tell you--you'll get up early if you ever get ahead of him. In the airly days, when we all had to go on tick for everything we got at his store--they do say that every time one of us farmers went to town that Mason, as soon as he saw us, would say to his bookkeeper: 'Tom Perkins is in town; put him down for a dollar's worth of sugar and a quarter of chewin' tobacco.'" Pearl came out with a pail to dig some potatoes in the garden. "Well, my pretty dear," Mr. Perkins said amiably, "how are you feeling this evening?" "I am real well, thank you," Pearl said, "and I hope you are, too." "Well now, my dear, I am not," he said. "You know, of course, that Buddie's gone." "Yes, I know," said Pearl, "but I know Bud didn't do it. Bud is a good boy, and too honest to do any thing like that. Bud wouldn't plug grain. What does Bud care for a few cents more on every bushel if he has to lie to get it?" "Look at that now, John!" Mr. Perkins cried, nudging Mr. Watson gaily. "Isn't that a woman for you all over, young and all as she is? They never think how the money comes, the lovely critturs." "Money isn't everything, Mr. Perkins," said Pearl earnestly. "Well, my little dear, most of us think it is pretty nearly everything." "God doesn't care very much about money," she answered. "Look at the sort of people he gives it to." Mr. Perkins looked at her in surprise. "Upon my word, that's true," he said. "Say, Pearlie, you'll be taking away the preachers' job from them when you get a little bigger, if they're not careful." Pearl laughed good-humouredly and went on with her potato-digging.