For a moment failure stared me in the face.  His expression said with emphasis:  “Perhaps you don’t know who I am.”  But I looked at him with the greatest good feeling and my expression said, or I meant it to say:  “To be sure I don’t:  and what difference does it make, anyway!”

“You take hold there,” I said, without waiting for him to catch his breath, “and I’ll get hold here.  Together we can easily get the wheel off.”

Without a word he set his cane against the barn and bent his back, up came the axle and I propped it with a board.

“Now,” I said, “you hang on there and steady it while I get the wheel off”—­though, indeed, it didn’t really need much steadying.

As I straightened up, whom should I see but Harriet standing transfixed in the pathway half way down to the barn, transfixed with horror.  She had recognised John Starkweather and had heard at least part of what I said to him, and the vision of that important man bending his back to help lift the axle of my old wagon was too terrible!  She caught my eye and pointed and mouthed.  When I smiled and nodded, John Starkweather straightened up and looked around.

“Don’t, on your life,” I warned, “let go of that axle.”

He held on and Harriet turned and retreated ingloriously.  John Starkweather’s face was a study!

“Did you ever grease a wagon?” I asked him genially.

“Never,” he said.

“There’s more of an art in it than you think,” I said, and as I worked I talked to him of the lore of axle-grease and showed him exactly how to put it on—­neither too much nor too little, and so that it would distribute itself evenly when the wheel was replaced.

“There’s a right way of doing everything,” I observed.

“That’s so,” said John Starkweather:  “if I could only get workmen that believed it.”

By that time I could see that he was beginning to be interested.  I put back the wheel, gave it a light turn and screwed on the nut.  He helped me with the other end of the axle with all good humour.

“Perhaps,” I said, as engagingly as I knew how, “you’d like to try the art yourself?  You take the grease this time and I’ll steady the wagon.”

“All right!” he said, laughing, “I’m in for anything.”

He took the grease box and the paddle—­less gingerly than I thought he would.

“Is that right?” he demanded, and so he put on the grease.  And oh, it was good to see Harriet in the doorway!

“Steady there,” I said, “not so much at the end:  now put the box down on the reach.”

And so together we greased the wagon, talking all the time in the friendliest way.  I actually believe that he was having a pretty good time.  At least it had the virtue of unexpectedness.  He wasn’t bored!

When he had finished we both straightened our backs and looked at each other.  There was a twinkle in his eye:  then we both laughed.  “He’s all right,” I said to myself.  I held up my hands, then he held up his:  it was hardly necessary to prove that wagon-greasing was not a delicate operation.