“This is Mrs. Durham,” I said.  “My dear, please give Mr. Bagley ten pounds of flour and a piece of pork.  After you’re had your dinner, Mr. Bagley, I shall expect you, as we’ve agreed.  And if you’ll chain up that dog of yours, or, better still, knock it on the head with an axe, Mrs. Durham will go down and see your wife about fixing up your children.”

Winifred gave me a pleased, intelligent look, and said, “Come in, Mr. Bagley;” while Merton and I hastened away to catch up with neglected work.

“Your husband’s been good to me,” said the man, abruptly.

“That’s because he believes you are going to be good to yourself and your family,” was her smiling reply.

“Will you come and see my wife?” he asked.

“Certainly, if I don’t have to face your dog,” replied Winifred.

“I’ll kill the critter soon’s I go home,” muttered Bagley.

“It hardly pays to keep a big, useless dog,” was my wife’s practical comment.

In going to the cellar for the meat, she left him alone for a moment or two with Mousie; and he, under his new impulses, said:  “Little gal, ef my children hurt your flowers agin, let me know, and I’ll thrash ’em!”

The child stole to his side and gave him her hand, as she replied, “Try being kind to them.”

Bagley went home with some new ideas under his tattered old hat.  At half-past twelve he was on hand, ready for work.

“That dog that tried to bite ye is dead and buried,” he said, “and I hope I buried some of my dog natur’ with ’im.”

“You’ve shown your good sense.  But I haven’t time to talk now.  The old man has mown a good deal of grass.  I want you to shake it out, and, as soon as he says it’s dry enough, to rake it up.  Toward night I’ll be out with the wagon, and we’ll stow all that’s fit into the barn.  To-morrow I want your two eldest children to come and pick berries.”

“I’m in fer it, Mr. Durham.  You’ve given me your hand, and I’ll show yer how that goes furder with me than all the blood-and-thunder talk in Maizeville,” said Bagley, with some feeling.

“Then you’ll show that you can be a man like the rest of us,” I said, as I hastened to our early dinner.

My wife beamed and nodded at me.  “I’m not going to say anything to set you up too much,” she said.  “You are great on problems, and you are solving one even better than I hoped.”

“It isn’t solved yet,” I replied.  “We have only started Bagley and his people on the right road.  It will require much patience and good management to keep them there.  I rather think you’ll have the hardest part of the problem yet on your hands.  I have little time for problems now, however, except that of making the most of this season of rapid growth and harvest.  I declare I’m almost bewildered when I see how much there is to be done on every side.  Children, we must all act like soldiers in the middle of a fight.  Every stroke must tell.  Now, we’ll hold a council of war, so as to make the most of the afternoon’s work.  Merton, how are the raspberries?”