“Then,” said Albert, “I can buy more stock, and perhaps hire some help, and get more land cleared this fall, so as to have greater crops next spring, and then sell the stock when it has grown and increased, and also the crops, and so get money enough to pay back the debt and have something over.”

“Should you have much over?” asked Mary.

“Why that would depend upon how my business turned out,—­and that would depend upon the weather, and the markets, and other things which we can not now foresee.  I think it probable that we should have a good deal over.”

“Well,” said Mary Erskine, “then I would take the money.”

“But, then, on the other hand,” said Albert, “I should run some risk of embarrassing myself, if things did not turn out well.  If I were to be sick, so that I could not attend to so much business, or if I should Jose any of my stock, or if the crops should not do well, then I might not get enough to pay back the debt.”

“And what should you do then?” asked Mary Erskine.

“Why then,” replied Albert, “I should have to make up the deficiency in some other way.  I might ask Mr. Keep to put off the payment of the note, or I might borrow the money of somebody else to pay him, or I might sell some of my other stock.  I could do any of these things well enough, but it would perhaps cause me some trouble and anxiety.”

“Then I would not take the money,” said Mary Erskine.  “I don’t like anxiety.  I can bear any thing else better than anxiety.”

“However, I don’t know any thing about it,” continued Mary Erskine, after a short pause.  “You can judge best.”

They conversed on the subject some time longer, Albert being quite at a loss to know what it was best to do.  Mary Erskine, for her part, seemed perfectly willing that he should borrow the money to buy more stock, as she liked the idea of having more oxen, sheep, and cows.  But she seemed decidedly opposed to using borrowed money to build a new house, or to buy new furniture.  Her head would ache, she said, to lie on a pillow of feathers that was not paid for.

Albert finally concluded not to borrow the money, and so Mr. Keep lent it to Mr. Gordon.

Things went on in this way for about three or four years, and then Albert began to think seriously of building another house.  He had now money enough of his own to build it with.  His stock had become so large that he had not sufficient barn room for his hay, and he did not wish to build larger barns where he then lived, for in the course of his clearings he had found a much better place for a house than the one which they had at first selected.  Then his house was beginning to be too small for his family, for Mary Erskine had, now, two children.  One was an infant, and the other was about two years old.  These children slept in a trundle-bed, which was pushed under the great bed in the daytime, but still the room became rather crowded.  So Albert determined to build another house.