“You must get pretty lonely sometimes,” said Lois kindly, with a sudden sympathy for something in his tone. He nodded slowly. “Well, yes, I do; but I’ve quit thinkin’ of it, as a rule. I reckon I’ve got about as much as I deserve in this world, when you come to sizin’ things up. If you get to pityin’ yourself, you slump; you slump all _to_ pieces—ain’t no mortal good to yourself nor anybody else. I’ve found _that_ out.” “You seem to find out a good many things,” said Lois, with a twinge of assent. “Well, yes, I do.” His face relaxed in a pleased smile. “Keep addin’ to my collection daily; but it isn’t cheap, no more than other collectin’—costs money. Girard says—by the way, I never asked you if you knew Girard, Bailey Girard; I met him to-night getting off the train. I didn’t know he was on it till then. Mrs. Alexander, this rabbit’s more’n good. I haven’t had one like it since I was with Girard last year.” “No, I do not know anyone by that name,” said Lois a little wearily. “Then you’d ought to; Miss Dosia, here, she’d ought to. He’s a _man_. Young, too, just the kind she’d like. He’s related to the Wilmots, Judge Wilmot’s family; they lived down our way, Miss Dosia, before you came. His folks were mighty fine people in the South, but they lost all their money. Kind of wearin’ to hear that, ain’t it? I get tired of it myself. I know a lot of splendid families who have lost all their money—or are a-losin’ it. It kind of tones me up now when I hear of anybody that’s risin’ into the ranks of the solid rich; makes it seem sort of possible to walk on somethin’ that isn’t a down grade.” “How about Mr. Girard?” asked Dosia. “Oh, well, he’s all right. He’s on an up grade, if anybody ever was—now. But I wouldn’t want a boy of mine to go through what he has, though it’s made him what he is. His mother was left a widow after they’d moved ’way out West. She was a delicate woman, and had a hard time of it struggling along; most of her folks were dead, and I don’t know that she wrote to the rest of ’em. I don’t know but what her mind got sort of wanderin’ when she fell sick. She died at a little town in Indiana, on her way back East, and there wasn’t anyone to look after the child. He was bound out to a man on a farm; he was ten years old then, and he stayed there till he was thirteen. The cussed hound used to beat him with a strap, nights when he was in liquor. Many a time the poor little chap, brought up tender by a lovin’ mother, used to crawl into the barn and hide in a corner of the hay near the dumb beasts and cry his heart out till he got quiet. He told me once—Girard, he hardly ever talks about himself, but this was a time when we were stalled in a snow-storm—he told me that he supposed it was because of the Christmas story you read in the Bible that he felt that if he could only get into the barn in the hay by the dumb beasts he was a little nearer to _her_.”