The Able McLaughlins
she talked with leisure and understanding. When the meal was finished, Flora handed her father The Book again.
"By Golly!" said the stranger to himself, "they're going to do it again!" And they did. The mother lifted the Psalm from memory, and then they repeated some part of the Bible. The stranger was the more ill at ease because young Hughie's eyes were fixed accusingly upon him. Again the father prayed for all the inhabitants of the world, by name or class.
When the boys brought the guest's wonderful team to the door, all the family gathered to bid him good-by.
"I wish you well, sir, for your kindness," the father said, and the mother, at a loss to know how to thank him sufficiently, added,
"We'll never forget this, neither us nor our children!" It was that trembling choked back in her voice that gave the stranger's grandson his work with the firm of Andrew McLaughlin, in the fall of 1920.
The beautiful grays started impatiently away, the men went to their work, and the children to their school. In the kitchen his mother bandaged Wully's feet, and put the wee'uns out of door to play while he had a sleep. At half past eleven he woke. His mother was sitting in the doorway, shelling beans. How was he to guess that she was late with her dinner preparations because again and again she had to stop, and look at this child
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