to me: ‘Say, you better get busy and fix a new ketch on that gate to the back porch. Little Elmer, first thing I know, he’d got it open to-day and was crawling out almost.’ Say, can you beat that for a kid sixteen months — — ”

Nick had finished shaving, had donned his clean white soft shirt. His soft collar fitted to a miracle about his strong throat. Nick’s sartorial effects were a triumph — on forty a week. “Say, can’t you talk about nothing but that kid of yours? I bet he’s a bum specimen at that. Runt, like his pa.”

Elmer flung down his newspaper in honest indignation as Nick had wickedly meant he should. “Is that so! Why, we was wrastling round — me and him, see — last night on the floor, and