’That’s so, square.  ’Tain’t good manners, and I know it, as well as the next one.  I’m awful sorry about the chair, and think mebby I could get it mended.  I’d like to try.’

‘Never mind the chair,’ Arthur said, with an impatient gesture.  ’Try another and a stronger one, and let’s go back to business.  You want a painted panel for your carriage.  How will this do?’ and he rapidly sketched a green, pleasant meadow, with a canal running through it, and on the canal a boat, drawn by one horse, which a barefoot, elfish-looking boy was driving.

‘I swow, square, you’re a trump, you be,’ Peterkin exclaimed, slapping him on the back, ’You’ve hit it to a dot.  That’s the ’Lizy Ann, and that there boy is Bije Jones, drivin the old spavin hoss.  You or’to hev me somewhere in sight, cussin’ the hands as I generally was, and May Jane on deck, hangin’ her clothes to dry.  Could you manage that?’

Arthur thought he could, but suggested that Mrs. Peterkin might not like to be made so conspicuous.

’Possibly she will not like this drawing at all.  She may think it too suggestive of other days.’

‘That’s so,’ Peterkin assented, a little sadly; ’and if she don’t take to it, the old Harry can’t make her.  She used to be the meekest of wives them days she dried her clothes on the ’Lizy Ann, but she don’t knock under wuth a cent sense we riz in the world, and Ann Lizy is wus than her mother.  But I’ll show this to the old woman and let you know.’

May Jane did not approve, neither did Billy.  No use, they said, to flaunt the canal, horse, driver, and all in people’s faces; and so the discomfited Peterkin went to Arthur again and told him, ’the fat was all in the fire, and May Jane on a rampage.’

‘Try again, squire; but give us some kind of water and craft.’

So Arthur good-humoredly changed the canal into a gracefully flowing river, in a bend of which, in the distance, there was just visible a boat, which was a cross between a gondola and one of those little dangerous things so common on the lakes of Wisconsin.  Standing in the bow of the boat, with folded arms, as if calmly contemplating the scenery, was the figure of a man—­suppositively Peterkin—­who swore ’he’d keep this picter in spite of ’em;’ and as his wife did not seriously object, the sketch was transferred in oil to a pannel and inserted in the carriage, which, when drawn by two shining bays and driven by a colored man in long coat and tall hat, with Peterkin sitting back in it with all the pride and pompousness of a two-millionaire, and May Jane at his side, covered with diamonds, attracted general attention and comment.  Billy seldom patronized the carriage, but frequently rode beside it, talking to his mother, of whom he was very fond, and taking off his hat to every person he met, whether old or young, rich or poor.