“I know,” said J.W.  “But don’t you find country people pretty hard to manage?  That’s our experience at the store.  They are particular and critical, and think they know just what they want.”

“They do too,” Marty asserted, “Why shouldn’t they?  I believe I can tell you one big difference between the city boy and the country.  You’ve been both; see if I’m right.  The country boy minds his folks, and his teacher.  But everything else minds him.  He is boss of every critter on the place, from the hens to the horses, whenever he has anything to do with them at all.  So he learns to think for them, as well as for himself.  In the city the boy has no chance to give orders—­he’s under orders, all the time; the traffic cop, the truant officer, the boss in the shop or the office, the street car conductor, the janitor—­everybody bosses him and he bosses nothing, except his kid brothers and sisters.  So he may come to be half cringer and half bully.  The country boy is not likely to be much afraid, and he soon learns that if he tries to boss even the boys without good reason it doesn’t pay.  Maybe that’s the reason so many country boys make good when they go to the city.”

“And the reason why a city boy like me,” suggested J.W., “would be a misfit in the country.”

“Oh, you,” scoffed Marty.  “You don’t count.  You’re a half-breed.  But, as I meant to say, you’re right about country folks.  They are a little close, maybe.  They are more independent in their business than town people, but they learn how to work together; they exchange farm work, and work the roads, and they are fairly dependent on one another for all social life.”

“On Deep Creek the tenant farmers are the biggest difficulty, your dad told me last Sunday,” said J.W.  “They go to town when they go anywhere, and not to church, either.”

“I know,” said Marty.  “And I don’t much blame ’em, from all I hear.  But Henderson changed that considerably in this community.  He found out that the tenants were just as human as the others, only they had the idea that nobody cared about them, because they might be here to-day and gone to-morrow.  And, what do you think?  I find tenant farmers around here are beginning to take longer leases; one or two are about like dad’s been with your father—­more partners than anything else.  Every renter family in this neighborhood comes to our church, and only three or four fight shy of us at Valencia.”

“All right,” said J.W., drowsily.  “Go to sleep now; I’ve got to inspect that Holstein hotel in the morning, and I know what country hours are.”

The next day J.W. drove off toward the big barns of his customer, and left Marty deep in the mysteries of Sunday’s sermon.  Marty was yet a very young preacher, and one sermon a week was all he could manage, as several of his admirers had found out to his discomfiture, when one Sunday they followed him from Ellis in the morning to Valencia at night.  But the “twicers” professed to enjoy it.