“I reckon it is too heavy for you to carry,” he said timidly.

“’Tain’t much to tote,” returned Marthy Burr opposingly.  “If I’d never had nothin’ more’n that to bear I’d have as straight a back as yo’ pa’s got.  ’Tain’t the water buckets as bends a woman, nohow; it’s the things as the Lord lays on extry.”

She relinquished the bucket and followed Nicholas resentfully to the house.

“I never did care ‘bout havin’ folks come ‘round interferin’ with my burdens,” she murmured half-aggrievedly.  “I ain’t done for yet, an’ when I is I reckon I’ll know it as soon as anybody—­lessen it’s yo’ pa, who’s got powerful sharp eyes at seein’ the failin’s of other people—­an’ powerful dull ones when it comes to recognisin’ his own.”

Then she set about preparing breakfast, and Nicholas flung himself into a chair on the porch.  Nannie, a pretty, auburn-haired girl, was grinding coffee in a small mill, and he looked at her thoughtfully; then Jubal came out, whittling a stick, and he turned his gaze inquiringly upon him.

“What would you like to do in the world, Jubal?” he asked, “best of all?”

Jubal looked up in perplexity, his fat forehead wrinkling.

“You ain’t countin’ in eatin’, I s’pose?” he replied doubtfully.

Nicholas shook his head.

“No, leave out eating,” he said.

“An’ the splittin’ open of that durn livered Spike Turner?”

“Yes, that too.”

Jubal whittled slowly, his forehead wrinkling more deeply.

“Then I don’t know whether it’s to give ma a rest or to own Billy Flinders’s coon dog, Boss,” he said.

Nicholas laughed for an instant, but the laugh softened into a smile.

At the table he asked his stepmother and Sairy Jane about the spring chickens, and they answered with surprised eagerness.

“I am going to mark the lambs to-morrow,” he said.  “They’re a nice lot.”  And he added:  “Some day I’ll take the farm and make it pay.”

“I don’t see what you want to go steppin’ in yo’ pa’s shoes for,” put in Marthy Burr.  “When toes have got p’inted down-hill they ain’t goin’ no other way.  Don’t you come back to raisin’ things on this land.  I ain’t never seen nothin’ thrive on it yet, cep’n weeds, an’ the Lord knows they warn’t planted.”

Nicholas shook his head.

“Why, look at Turner,” he said.  “His land is as poor as this, and he makes an easy living.”

“A Turner ain’t a Burr,” returned his stepmother with uncompromising logic, “an’ a Burr ain’t a Turner.  Whar the blood runs the man follows, an’ yours ain’t runnin’ towards the farm.  Jeb Turner can fling a handful of corn in poor groun’, an’ thar’ll come up a cornfield, an’ yo’ pa may plant with the sweat of his brow an’ the groanin’ of his spirit, an’ the crows git it.  A farmer’s got to be born, same as a fool.  You can’t make a corn pone out of flour dough by the twistin’ of it.”