So the night passed and morning came and with it a certain degree of bitterly philosophic acceptance of the situation.  He was a fool; so much was sure.  He was of no use in the world, he never had been.  People laughed at him and he deserved to be laughed at.  He rose from the bed upon which he had thrown himself some time during the early morning hours and, after eating a cold mouthful or two in lieu of breakfast, sat down at his turning lathe.  He could make children’s whirligigs, that was the measure of his capacity.

All the forenoon the lathe hummed.  Several times steps sounded on the front walk and the latch of the shop door rattled, but Jed did not rise from his seat.  He had not unlocked that door, he did not mean to for the present.  He did not want to wait on customers; he did not want to see callers; he did not want to talk or be talked to.  He did not want to think, either, but that he could not help.

And he could not shut out all the callers.  One, who came a little after noon, refused to remain shut out.  She pounded the door and shouted “Uncle Jed” for some few minutes; then, just as Jed had begun to think she had given up and gone away, he heard a thumping upon the window pane and, looking up, saw her laughing and nodding outside.

“I see you, Uncle Jed,” she called.  “Let me in, please.”

So Jed was obliged to let her in and she entered with a skip and a jump, quite unconscious that her “back-step-uncle” was in any way different, either in feelings or desire for her society, than he had been for months.

“Why did you have the door locked, Uncle Jed?” she demanded.  “Did you forget to unlock it?”

Jed, without looking at her, muttered something to the effect that he cal’lated he must have.

“Um-hm,” she observed, with a nod of comprehension.  “I thought that was it.  You did it once before, you know.  It was a ex-eccen-trick, leaving it locked was, I guess.  Don’t you think it was a—­ a—­one of those kind of tricks, Uncle Jed?”

Silence, except for the hum and rasp of the lathe.

“Don’t you, Uncle Jed?” repeated Barbara.

“Eh? . . .  Oh, yes, I presume likely so.”

Babbie, sitting on the lumber pile, kicked her small heels together and regarded him with speculative interest.

“Uncle Jed,” she said, after a few moments of silent consideration, “what do you suppose Petunia told me just now?”

No answer.

“What do you suppose Petunia told me?” repeated Babbie.  “Something about you ’twas, Uncle Jed.”

Still Jed did not reply.  His silence was not deliberate; he had been so absorbed in his own pessimistic musings that he had not heard the question, that was all.  Barbara tried again.

“She told me she guessed you had been thinking awf’ly hard about something this time, else you wouldn’t have so many eccen-tricks to-day.”