“‘Whistlin’ gals an’ crowin’ hens
      Always come to some bad ends!’”

“Now, Jabez!” remonstrated Aunt Alvirah.

But Ruth only laughed.  “You’ve got it wrong, Uncle Jabez,” she declared.  “There is another version of that old doggerel.  It is: 

    “’Whistling girls and blatting sheep
      Are the two best things a farmer can keep!’”

Then she went straight to him and, as his irritated face came out of the huck towel, she put both arms around his neck and kissed him on his grizzled cheek.

This sort of treatment always closed her Uncle Jabez’s lips for a time.  There seemed no answer to be made to such an argument—­and Ruth did love the crusty old man and was grateful to him.

When the miller had retired to his own chamber to count and recount the profits of the day, as he always did every evening, Aunt Alvirah complained more than usual of the old man’s niggardly ways.

“It’s gittin’ awful, Ruthie, when you ain’t to home.  He’s ashamed to have me set so mean a table when you air here.  For he does kinder care about what you think of him, my pretty, after all.”

“Oh, Aunt Alvirah!  I thought he was cured of little ‘stingies.’”

“No, he ain’t! no, he ain’t!” cried the old lady, sitting down with a groan.  “Oh, my back! and oh, my bones!  I tell ye, my pretty, I have to steal out things a’tween meals to Ben sometimes, or that boy wouldn’t have half enough to eat.  Jabez has had a new padlock put on the meat-house door, and I can’t git a slice of bacon without his knowin’ on it.”

“That is ridiculous!” exclaimed Ruth, who had less patience now than she once had for her great uncle’s penuriousness.  She was positive that it was not necessary.

“Ree-dic’lous or not; it’s so,” Aunt Alvirah asserted.  “Sometimes I feel like I was a burden on him myself.”

“You a burden, dear Aunt Alvirah!” cried Ruth, with tears in her eyes.  “You would be a blessing, not a burden, in anybody’s house.  Uncle Jabez was very fortunate indeed to get you to come here to the Red Mill.”

“I dunno—­I dunno,” groaned the old lady.  “Oh, my back! and oh, my bones!  I’m a poor, rheumaticky creeter—­and nobody but Jabez would have taken me out o’ the poorhouse an’ done for me as he has.”

“You mean, you have done for him!” cried Ruth, in some passion.  “You have kept his house for him, and mended for him, and made a home for him, for years.  And I doubt if he has ever thanked you—­not once!”

“But I have thanked him, deary,” said Aunt Alvirah, sweetly.  “And I do thank him, same as I do our Father in Heaven, ev’ry day of my life, for takin’ me away from that poorfarm an’ makin’ an independent woman of me a’gin.  Oh, Jabez ain’t all bad.  Fur from it, my pretty—­fur from it!

“Now that you ain’t no more beholden to him for your eddication, an’ all, he is more pennyurious than ever—­yes he is!  For Jabez’s sake, I could almost wish you hadn’t got all that money you did, for gittin’ back the lady’s necklace.  Spendin’ money breeds the itch for spendin’ more.  Since you wrote him that you was goin’ to pay all your school bills, Jabez Potter is cured of the little itch of that kind he ever had.”