When the boys got home everybody had something to show but Danny. Tommy had his mouse's nest; Patsey had the hawk's nest; Bugsey had a fungus. Danny was the only empty-handed one, but Pearlie cheered him up wonderfully by predicting that he would get the very first wood-tick when the season opened. CHAPTER VIII A GOOD LISTENER The prosperity of a joke lieth in the ear of thine friend. _----Shakespeare._ WHILE John Watson was busy fixing the dilapidated stables, he was joined by his nearest neighbour, Thomas Perkins, who was of a very sociable nature, and loved the sound of his own voice. Thomas Perkins was a man of middle age, a stout man with a florid countenance and dewy blue eyes; his skin was of that quality that is easily roughened by the wind. He always spoke rapidly, and without punctuation. "How do you do, Mr. Watson, how do you do? Just movin' in, eh? Well, sir, I'm glad to see you; the little house looked lonely since Bill and the wife left. Poor Bill, he was a decent chap, too; but he lost his bet." "What was the bet about?" Mr. Watson asked, while the other man stopped to light his pipe. "Well, you see, Bill bet the Government ten dollars that he could make a living on this farm, and the Government puts up the farm against the ten dollars that he can't. That's the way it goes. Nearly every body wins when they bet with the Government. I made the same bet twenty years ago, and it would take ten thousand dollars now to get me off of old seventeen, north half; you see, I won my bet, but poor Bill lost his. Still, it wasn't a fair race. Bill would have won it if the Government hadn't put the whiskey in his way. You can be pretty sure it's whiskey that wins it for the Government nearly every time when the homesteader loses. You'll win yours, all right, no fear of that. I made my start when I was nine years old; left home with the wind in my back--that's all I ever got from home--and I started right in to make my pile, and I guess I haven't done too bad, eh? What's that?" Mr. Watson had not spoken, but the other man nudged him genially and did not resent his silence at all. "First money I ever earned was from an old Scotch woman, picking potatoes at eleven cents a day, and I worked at it twenty-five hours a day, up an hour before day--there was no night there, you bet, it was like heaven that way; and then when I got my sixty-six cents, didn't she take it from me to keep. It was harder to get it back from her than to earn it--oh, gosh! you know what the Scotch are like. Ye see, my mother died when I was a little fellow, and the old man married again, a great big, raw-boned, rangey lady. I says: 'Not for mine,' when I saw her, and lit out--never got a thing from home and only had about enough clothes on me to flag a train--and I've railroaded and worked in lumber shanties. But a farm's the place to make money. How many of a family have ye?" "Nine," John Watson said, after some deliberation.