“Say, I’ll tell ye,” said Brimstead.  “Honesty is like Sapington’s pills.  There’s nothing that’s so well recommended.  It has a great many friends.  But Honesty has to pay prompt.  We don’t trust it long.  It has poor credit.  When we have to give a dollar’s worth of work to correct an error of four cents, we’re apt to decide that Honesty don’t pay.  But that’s when it pays best.  We’ve heard the jingle o’ them four cents ’way up here in Tazewell County, an’ long before you told us.  They say he’s a smart talker an’ that he can split ye wide open laughin’.”

“He’s a great story-teller, but that’s a small part of him,” said Samson.  “He’s a kind of a four horse team.  He knows more than any man I ever saw and can tell it and he can wrestle like old Satan and swing a scythe or an axe all day an’ mighty supple.  He’s one of us common folks and don’t pretend to be a bit better.  He is, though, and we know it, but I don’t think he knows it.”

“Say, there ain’t many of us smart enough to keep that little piece of ignorance in our heads,” said Brimstead.  “It’s worth a fortune, now—­ain’t it?”

“Is he going to marry the Rutledge girl?” was the query of Mrs. Brimstead.

“I don’t think so,” Samson answered, a little surprised at her knowledge of the attachment.  “He’s as humly as Sam Hill and dresses rough and ain’t real handy with the gals.  Some fellers are kind o’ fenced in with humliness and awkwardness.”

Brimstead expressed his private opinion in a clearly audible whisper:  “Say, that kind o’ protection is better’n none.  A humly boy don’t git tramped on an’ nibbled too much.”

Annabel and Harry sat in a corner playing checkers.  They seemed to be much impressed by the opinion of Mr. Brimstead.  For a moment their game was forgotten.

“That boy has a way with the gals,” Samson laughed.  “There’s no such fence around either of them.”

“They’re both liable to be nibbled some,” said Brimstead.

“I like to see ’em have a good time,” said his wife.  “There are not many boys to play with out here.”

“The boys around here are all fenced in,” said Annabel.  “There’s nobody here of my age but Lanky Peters, who looks like a fish, and a red-headed Irish boy with a wooden leg.”

“Say, she’s like a woodpecker in a country where there ain’t any trees,” said Brimstead, in his confidential tone.

“No I’m not,” the girl answered.  “A woodpecker has wings and the right to use them.”

“Cheer up.  A lot of people will be moving in here this spring—­more boys than you could shake a stick at,” Mrs. Brimstead remarked, cheerfully.

“If I shake any stick at them, it will be a stick of candy, for fear of scaring them away,” said Annabel, with a laugh.

Brimstead said to Samson:  “Say, I’ll tell ye, you’re back in a cove.  You must get out into the current.”

“And give the young folks a chance to play checkers together,” said Samson.