"Well, Harry, if she's such a fool, you're lucky to have found it out so soon," said Sarah. "She does little but ride the pony and play around with a gun. I don't believe she ever spun a hank o' yarn in her life. She'll get her teeth cut by and by. Abe is right We're always dropping our apples and feeling very bad about it, until we find out that there are lots of apples just as good. I'm that way myself. I guess I've made it harder for Samson crying over lost apples. I'm going to try to stop it."
Then fell a moment of silence. Soon she said:
"There's a bitter wind blowing and there's no great hurry about the rails, I guess. You sit here by the fire and read your book this forenoon. Maybe it will help you to find your work."
So it happened that the events of Harry's morning found their place in the diary which Sarah and Samson kept. Long afterward Harry added the sentences about the razor.
That evening Harry read aloud from the Life of Henry Clay, while Sarah and Samson sat listening by the fireside. It was the first of many evenings which they spent in a like fashion that winter. When the book was finished they read, on Abe's recommendation, Weem's Life of Washington.
Every other Sunday they went down to the schoolhouse to hear John Cameron preach. He was a working man, noted for good common sense, who talked simply and often effectively of the temptations of the frontier, notably those of drinking, gaming and swearing. One evening they went to a debate in the tavern on the issues of the day, in which Abe won the praise of all for an able presentation of the claim of Internal Improvements. During that evening Alexander Ferguson declared that he would not cut his hair until Henry Clay became president, the news of which resolution led to a like insanity in others and an age of unexampled hairiness on that part of the border.
For Samson and Sarah the most notable social event of the winter was a chicken dinner at which they and Mr. and Mrs. James Rutledge and Ann and Abe Lincoln and Dr. Allen were the guests of the Kelsos. That night Harry stayed at home with the children.
Kelso was in his best mood.
"Come," he said, when dinner was ready. "Life is more than friendship. It is partly meat."
"And mostly Kelso," said Dr. Allen.