The hired men haw-hawed and Ralph giggled.  Claude’s freckled face got very red.  The pancake grew stiff and heavy in his mouth and was hard to swallow.  His father knew he hated to drive the mules to town, and knew how he hated to go anywhere with Dan and Jerry.  As for the hides, they were the skins of four steers that had perished in the blizzard last winter through the wanton carelessness of these same hired men, and the price they would bring would not half pay for the time his father had spent in stripping and curing them.  They had lain in a shed loft all summer, and the wagon had been to town a dozen times.  But today, when he wanted to go to Frankfort clean and care-free, he must take these stinking hides and two coarse-mouthed men, and drive a pair of mules that always brayed and balked and behaved ridiculously in a crowd.  Probably his father had looked out of the window and seen him washing the car, and had put this up on him while he dressed.  It was like his father’s idea of a joke.

Mrs. Wheeler looked at Claude sympathetically, feeling that he was disappointed.  Perhaps she, too, suspected a joke.  She had learned that humour might wear almost any guise.

When Claude started for the barn after breakfast, she came running down the path, calling to him faintly,—­hurrying always made her short of breath.  Overtaking him, she looked up with solicitude, shading her eyes with her delicately formed hand.  “If you want I should do up your linen coat, Claude, I can iron it while you’re hitching,” she said wistfully.

Claude stood kicking at a bunch of mottled feathers that had once been a young chicken.  His shoulders were drawn high, his mother saw, and his figure suggested energy and determined self-control.

“You needn’t mind, mother.”  He spoke rapidly, muttering his words.  “I’d better wear my old clothes if I have to take the hides.  They’re greasy, and in the sun they’ll smell worse than fertilizer.”

“The men can handle the hides, I should think.  Wouldn’t you feel better in town to be dressed?” She was still blinking up at him.

“Don’t bother about it.  Put me out a clean coloured shirt, if you want to.  That’s all right.”

He turned toward the barn, and his mother went slowly back the path up to the house.  She was so plucky and so stooped, his dear mother!  He guessed if she could stand having these men about, could cook and wash for them, he could drive them to town!

Half an hour after the wagon left, Nat Wheeler put on an alpaca coat and went off in the rattling buckboard in which, though he kept two automobiles, he still drove about the country.  He said nothing to his wife; it was her business to guess whether or not he would be home for dinner.  She and Mahailey could have a good time scrubbing and sweeping all day, with no men around to bother them.