"Why were you so long?" asked his uncle impatiently, as Bob entered. "Your grandmother wouldn't let us eat till you came in, so I fed the calves and pigs for you while we were waiting."
"At home, Uncle Joe," replied Bob, as they seated themselves at the table, "we always milk at five o'clock and don't let anything else interfere with it. Father says a cow should be milked early and regularly."
"Well, Bob, your father's not a farmer, and if he wants you to quit in the middle of the afternoon to milk your cow, you can do so, but we'll milk ours after the day's work's done," was the stern answer.
"Probably that's the reason Gurney gives nearly as much milk as any three of yours," replied Bob quietly, to which remark his uncle made no reply.
III
A RAINY DAY
"Bob," said his uncle one rainy Saturday morning, a week later, "it's such a bad day we can't do anything outdoors, so we'd better sharpen up the tools; there's a lot of them that need grinding."
"All right," said Bob, and he got a can of water for the grindstone— an ancient model, turned by hand.
His uncle gathered up the tools and piled them beside the stone. There were two double-bitted axes and one pole axe, two brush hooks, three mowing scythes, a hatchet, a meat cleaver, half a dozen knives, both long and short—to say nothing of a drawing knife, some chisels and planes, which were added to the pile as an afterthought.
Bob looked dubiously at the tools as his uncle deposited them near at hand.