minute. Things all run together, somehow. 'N' the back er my head's odd 's it can be."

"Pooh! What of it? There can't any of us think stiddy; 'n' if we could what would it amount to, I should like to know? It wouldn't amount to a row of pins."

Ann dropped her work and clasped her hands. Mr. Baker saw that her hands were hard, and stained almost black on fingers and thumbs by much cutting of apples.

"Ye see," she said in a tremulous voice, "sometimes I think if mother had lived she'd er treated me so 't I could think stiddier. I s'pose mother 'd er loved me. They say mothers do. But Aunt Mandany told me mother died the year I got my fall from the cherry tree. I was eight then. I don't remember nothin' 'bout it, nor 'bout anything much. Mr. Baker, do you remember your mother?"

Mr. Baker said "Yes," abruptly. Something made it impossible for him to say more.

"I d' know how 'tis," went on the thin, minor voice, "but it always did seem to me 's though if I could remember my mother I could think stiddier, somehow. Do you

think I could?"

Mr. Baker started to his feet.

"I'll be dumbed 'f I c'n stan' it," he shouted. "No, nor I won't stan' it, nuther?"

He walked noisily across the room.

He came back and stood in front of Ann, who had patiently resumed work.

"Come," he said, "I think a lot of ye.

Le's git married."

Ann looked up. She straightened herself. "Then I should live with you?" she asked. "Of course."

She laughed.

There was so much of confident happiness in that laugh that the man's heart glowed youthfully.

"I shall be real glad to marry you, Mr. Baker," she said. Then, with pride, "'N' I c'n cook, 'n' I know first rate how to do housework."

She rose to her feet and flung up her head.

Mr. Baker put his arm about her.

"Le's go right along now," he said, more quickly than he had yet spoken. "We'll call to the minister's 'n' engage You e'n stop there. We'll be married to-day."

him.

"Can't ye wait till I c'n put on my bunnit 'n' shawl?" Ann asked.

She left the room. In a few moments she returned dressed for going. She had a sheet of note paper, a bottle

of ink, and a pen in her hands.

"I c'n write," she said, confidently, "'n' I call it fairer to leave word for Aunt Mandany."

"All right," was the response; "go ahead."

Mr, Baker said afterward that he never got much more nervous in his life than while Ann was writing that note. What if Mandany should appear! He wasn't going to back out, but he didn't want to see that woman.

The ink was thick, the pen like a pin, and Ann was a good while making each letter, but the task was at last accomplished. She held out the sheet to her companion.

"Ain't that right?" she asked.

Mr. Baker drew his face down solemnly, as he read:

DERE AUNT MANDANE:

I'm so dretfull Tired of beeing youre fool that ime going too be Mr. Bakers. He askt me.

"That's jest the thing," he said explosively.

come on."

ANN.

"Now,

As they walked along in the hot fall sunshine, Mr. Baker said, earnestly:

"I'm certain sure we sh'll be ever so much happier." "So'm I," Ann replied, with cheerful confidence. They were on a lonely road, and they walked hand in hand.

"I'm goin' to be good to ye," said the man, with still more earnestness. Then, in a challenging tone, as if addressing the world at large, "I guess 'taint nobody's business but our’n.”’

Ann looked at him and smiled trustfully.

After a while he began to laugh.

"I'm thinkin' of your Aunt Mandany when she reads that letter," he explained.

B

'At's the advice of

an old man as has seen lots of experience. I sit here at my bench winter an' summer an' watch the young uns go by. They grows up an' git married, an' bimeby I see their childrun runnin' round jest as their pas an' mas did. 'At's what I call expeerimental observation, an' I claim 'at it gives a man a reason'ble right to speak advice, 'specially to them 'at are his inferiors in age. It don't pay fer a young fellar as has had your bringin' up to be a-coortin' two gals at once. I don't want you to take no offence-never give no offence, is my axyum-but when I see how things was goin,' I jest had to speak right out."

Uncle Jake pulled his spectacles down toward the end of his nose, turned his head and squinted along the sole of the boot he was mending. The old shoemaker's shop stood on the main thoroughfare of the little Iowa town. It was a narrow one-story building, bulging out into the street as if it, like its owner, longed to impress itself prominently on the public eye. The door, begrimed by much handling, always gaped wide open except in the severest weather-a standing invitation to the wayfarer, whether he came bearing old shoes or the latest bit of news.

His companion was a tall, ruggedly handsome youth, loosely dressed in a fur-lined coat and blue jean trousers held up by a broad leather belt and disappearing at the knees into a rough pair of cowhide boots. His fur cap had fallen to the floor beside him, releasing the thick mop of

*Written for Short Stories. --Copyrighted.

He was

tangled black curls which clustered over his head. smiling complacently, as if half pleased with the shoemaker's warning. Before making a reply he seated himself on a low stool, drew out a clasp knife, and began carving grotesque figures upon a thin splinter of pine.

"Oh, you needn't worry, Uncle Jake," he said deliberately, "I ain't a-asking any two gals to fall in love with me. It's all I can do to 'tend to one. S'posin' they do," and he spread out his big hands with an expression of the utmost candor, “why, I can't help it, can I? The fault's theirn, not mine."

"True, true," replied Uncle Jake, briskly, "but you mustn't encourage 'em. Gals is queer creeters, an' when they does a thing once you can't never tell if they'll do the same again under sim'lar circumstances. Now, f'r instance, there's that little black-eyed gal 'at works fer Mister Robbins, in the post-office. Ha, you needn't look so unconsarned, an' try to let on 'at you don't know nothin' about Judith Montgomery. They claim 'at she's smart-mebbeand pretty, I grant, but there's the very Satan in her eyes, an' when she's toggled up in 'at red dress o' hern it fairly makes me shiver 's if I could smell brimstone," and Uncle Jake lowered his voice to a hoarse whisper, and glanced at Bob sharply from under his bushy gray brows.

"You ought to seen her look an' look," he continued, "when you danced with Sadie Hatch t'other night up to Brown's ball-you needn't 'pear s'prised; I can see things yet, 'thout my specs, if they're middlin' plain. Where I set a-fiddlin' I could watch her standin' off to one side with her eyes flashin' revengeful like 's if they was a-sayin', 'I'll pay you off. '

Bob leaned back, laughing, with his hands grasping one knee.

"You've got good eyes, Uncle Jake, but this time you're way behind the news," he said, still chuckling. "You haven't heard as how I've been up an' asked old man Hatch fer Sadie, an he said it would be all right as soon's I finished that there house I'm buildin' on my farm. Don't s'pose I'm a fool, do you, Uncle Jake?" and he winked one eye knowingly at the shoemaker. "P'raps Judith Montgomery is pretty an' smart, but so's Sadie, too, an' she's got a father as can set her up han'some at the weddin'. But still," he con

tinued, with a judicial twist of his head, and a half-impatient flourish of the much whittled pine stick, "Sadie's too gentle an' lovin' to have much fun in her always a-laughin' or a-cryin' when it ain't the right place. But now, concernin' Judith, it's diffrunt. If she don't like the way you're doin', she gits up on her ear, and mebbe slaps you in the facehard, too—or says she won't speak again in fifty years, but when she makes up――"

Bob stopped suddenly. His eyes rolled up, and he drew his mouth into a bland smile which ended in a loud smack as if to express the felicity which followed the calming of Judith's anger.

"She's spicy, she is," he continued, after a moment of rumination. "Why, there's a story 'round town as how she came here quiet like because she got mixed up in a shootin' scrape with some fellars down to Missoury. She goes on an' tells that her father an' mother are both dead, but there's no way of proving it."

"Has she heard as how you've got engaged to Sadie?" "I don' know-ner care," and Bob shrugged his shoulders contemptuously. "It's good 'nough for her. She got mad't me down to Brown's ball, an' wouldn't speak. 'Well,' says I, 'if you don't care to use your tongue, an' you've got plenty of it, why it's your own job an' not mine,' an' with that there cut I turned on my heel an' walked away. P'rhaps it'll learn her a lesson 'at she won't forget in a month of Sundays."

"Speakin' plain," said the shoemaker, "I'm mighty glad you've got it all fixed 'tween you an' Sadie, fer I never did like 't Montgomery gal. When's the weddin', Bob?"

"Oh, nex' spring some time," and Bob yawned, closed his knife and walked leisurely over to the window.

"Gehu," he exclaimed, "there's a big storm brewin', an' I must hustle down to the store an' get Sadie. She's waitin' fer me to walk home with her. Have them boots ready as soon's you can, Uncle Jake.”

Bob went out of the little shop with his coat buttoned tightly over his broad breast, and his cap drawn down until only a few knotty curls struggled from under its edges. After watching the young man until he disappeared down the street, the shoemaker wearily stretched his crooked legs, straightened his bent shoulders, and the words, "foolish,