"I wonder if the blamed brutes are going to be too maggoty for our use after all," he thought. "It'd be just my luck. He was fair about it though," John admitted reluctantly. "Oh, well, after all, he's worth having around, and I'm going to do a deal better than I would if he hadn't come along. Elizabeth was right--I did get in too deep." And with this astonishing admission, John Hunter finished haying the horses and walked slowly to the house, thinking about the new horses, and half prepared to admit that he had made a mistake in buying them outright from a man who was able to get away before they could be proven, but Elizabeth and Hugh were already sitting by the table in the living room and he knew he was wanted. He went to the bedroom to wash his hands--John could not form the habit of washing in the kitchen as other farmers did--and as he washed, meditated, and as he meditated he found himself ready to accept this reproof from Hugh Noland, ready to live up to agreements if Hugh imposed them, ready to listen to Hugh and love him. Something in Hugh Noland was so fundamentally square that the principle of squareness took on a new meaning to John Hunter. "Here you are! You're the one that's insisted on these readings most, and you're always late," Hugh cried as John came from the bedroom, fresh and well groomed as if he had not done barn chores a few minutes before. The reading was part of John Hunter's play world. John was not a man of scholarly tastes, but reading, like the use of the hairbrush he had just laid down, was good form: they were both part of the world to which John wished to belong. A book might or might not relate to that world, but it was a book and seemed to do so, and while John Hunter might or might not get much intellectual advancement out of a book, he got advancement out of sitting in Hugh Noland's presence and opening his heart to the love and respect Hugh commanded from him. John did not close himself off from Hugh's influence as he did from Elizabeth's, and the things he refused to take from her he adopted and readily set into action at Hugh's suggestion. It was destined to be the last night in which John was to be permitted the comfort of this new feature of home life, however. As they were gathered about the breakfast table a man rode into the lane and called John Hunter to the door without getting off his horse. "Doc Morgan was goin' past my house this mornin' an' asked me if I'd bring this over t' you. 'E said it came after you left town, an' th' agent didn't know how t' git over t' you 'thout he was comin' this way this mornin'. Hope it ain't no bad news." He waited to see John tear open the envelope and read the telegram. "My mother's sick," was John's hurried statement as he turned toward the house.