"But how could that be done?" Nettie said in wondering tones, which nevertheless had a note of admiration in them. Jerry went so deeply into things, it almost took her breath away to follow him.

"Just so; that's the problem which ought to be thought out. I can think of things enough; but the room, and the tools to begin with, are the trouble."

"What have you thought of? What would you do if you could?"

"O my!" said Jerry, with a little laugh; "don't ask me that question, or your folks will have no apple dumplings to-day. I don't believe there is any end to the things which I would do if I could. But the first beginnings of them are like this: suppose we had a few dollars capital, and a room."

"You might as well suppose we had a palace, and a million dollars," said Nettie, with a long-drawn sigh.

"No, because I don't expect either of those things; but I do mean to have a room and a few dollars in capital for this thing some day; only, you see, I don't want to wait for them."

"Well, go on; what then?"

"Why, then we would start an eating-house, you and I, on a little bit of a scale, you know. We would have bread with some kind of meat between, and coffee, in cold weather, and lemonade in hot, and a few apples, and now and then some nuts, and a good deal of gingerbread—soft, like what auntie Smith makes—and some ginger-snaps like those Mrs. Dix sent us from the country, and, well, you know the names of things better than I do. Real good things, I mean, but which don't cost much. Such as you, and Sarah Ann, and a good many bright girls learn how to make, without using a great deal of money. Those things are all rather cheap, which I have mentioned, because we have them at our house quite often, and the Smiths are poor, you know. But they are made so nice that they are just capital. Well, I would have them for sale, just as cheap as could possibly be afforded; a great deal cheaper than beer, or cigars, and I would have the room bright and cheery; warm in winter, and as cool as I could make it in summer; then I would have slips of paper scattered about the town, inviting young folks to come in and get a lunch; then when they came, I would have picture papers if I could, for them to look at, and games to play, real nice jolly games, and some kind of music going on now and then. I'd run opposition to that old grocery around the corner from Crossman's, with its fiddle and its whiskey. That's the beginning of what I would do. Just what I told you about, that first night we talked it over. The fellows, lots of them, have nowhere to go; it keeps growing in my mind, the need for doing something of the sort. I never pass that mean grocery without thinking of it."

You should have seen Nettie's eyes! The little touch of discouragement was gone out of them, and they were full of intense thought.

"I can see," she said at last, "just how splendid it might grow to be. But what did you mean about Norm? there isn't any work for him in such a plan. At least, I mean, not until he was interested to help for the sake of others."

"Yes, there is, plenty of business for him. Don't you see? I would have this room, open evenings, after the work was done, and I would have Norm head manager. He should wait on customers, and keep accounts. When the thing got going he would be as busy as a bee; and he is just the sort of fellow to do that kind of thing well, and like it too," he added.

"O Jerry," said Nettie, and her hands were clasped so closely that the blood flowed back into her wrists, "was there ever a nicer thought than that in the world! I know it would succeed; and Norm would like it so much. Norm likes to do things for others, if he only had the chance."

"I know it; and he likes to do things in a business way, and keep everything straight. Oh! he would be just the one. If we only had a room, there is nothing to hinder our beginning in a very small way. Those chickens are growing as fast as they can, and by Thanksgiving there will be a couple of them ready to broil; then the little old grandmothers did so well."

"I know it; who would have supposed that almost four dollars could be made out of some daisy grandmothers! Miss Sherrill gave me one dollar and ninety-five cents which she said was just half of what they had earned. I do think it was so nice in her to give us that chance! She couldn't have known how much we wanted the money. Jerry, why couldn't we begin, just with that? It would start us, and then if the things sold, why, the money from them would keep us started until we found a way to earn more. Why can't we?"

"Room," said Jerry, with commendable brevity. "Why, we have a room; there's the front one that we just put in such nice order. Why not? It is large enough for now, and maybe when our business grew we could get another one somehow."

Jerry stopped fitting the toe of his boot to a hole which he had made in the ground, and looked at the eager young woman of business before him. "Do you mean your mother would let us have the room, and the chance in the kitchen, to go into such business?"

"Mother would do anything," said Nettie emphatically, "anything in the world which might possibly keep Norm in the house evenings; you don't know how dreadfully she feels about Norm. She thinks father," and there Nettie stopped. How could a daughter put it into words that her mother was afraid her father would lead his son astray?

"I know," said Jerry. "See here, Nettie, what is the matter with your father? I never saw him look so still, and—well, queer, in some way. Mr. Smith says he doesn't think he is drinking a drop; but he looks unlike himself, somehow, and I can't decide how."

"I don't know," said Nettie, in a low voice. "We don't know what to think of him. He hasn't been so long without drinking, mother says, in four years. But he doesn't act right; or, I mean, natural. He isn't cross, as drinking beer makes him, but he isn't pleasant, as he was for a day or two. He is real sober; hardly speaks at all, nor notices the things I make; and I try just as hard to please him! He eats everything, but he does it as though he didn't know he was eating. Mother thinks he is in some trouble, but she can't tell what. He can't be afraid of losing his place—because mother says he was threatened that two or three times when he was drinking so hard, and he didn't seem to mind it at all; and why should he be discharged now, when he works hard every day? Last Saturday night he brought home more money than he has in years. Mother cried when she saw what there was, but she had debts to pay, so we didn't get much start out of it after all. Then we spend a good deal in coffee; we have it three times a day, hot and strong; I can see father seems to need it; and I have heard that it helped men who were trying not to drink. When I told mother that, she said he should have it if she had to beg for it on her knees. But I don't know what is the matter with father now. Sometimes mother is afraid there is a disease coming on him such as men have who drink; she says he doesn't sleep very well nights, and he groans some, when he is asleep. Mother tries hard," said Nettie, in a closing burst of confidence, "and she does have such a hard time! If we could only save Norm for her."

"I'll tell you who your mother looks like, or would look like if she were dressed up, you know. Did you ever see Mrs. Burt?"

"The woman who lives in the cottage where the vines climb all around the front, and who has birds, and a baby? I saw her yesterday. You don't think mother looks like her!"

"She would," said Jerry, positively, "if she had on a pink and white dress and a white fold about her neck. I passed there last night, while Mrs. Burt was sitting out by that window garden of hers, with her baby in her arms; Mr. Burt sat on one of the steps, and they were talking and laughing together. I could not help noticing how much like your mother she looked when she turned her side face. Oh! she is younger, of course; she looks almost as though she might be your mother's daughter. I was thinking what fun it would be if she were, and we could go and visit her, and get her to help us about all sorts of things. Mr. Burt knows how to do every kind of work about building a house, or fixing up a room."

"He is a nice man, isn't he?"

"Why, yes, nice enough; he is steady and works hard. Mr. Smith thinks he is quite a pattern; he has bought that little house where he lives, and fixed it all up with vines and things; but I should like him better if he didn't puff tobacco smoke into his wife's face when he talked with her. He doesn't begin to be so good a workman as your father, nor to know so much in a hundred ways. I think your father is a very nice-looking man when he is dressed up. He looks smart, and he is smart. Mr. Smith says there isn't a man in town who can do the sort of work that he can at the shop, and that he could get very high wages and be promoted and all that, if"—

Jerry stopped suddenly, and Nettie finished the sentence with a sigh. She too had passed the Burt cottage and admired its beauty and neatness. To think that Mr. Burt owned it, and was a younger man by fifteen years at least than her father—and was not so good a workman! then see how well he dressed his wife; and little Bobby Burt looked as neat and pretty in Sunday-school as the best of them. It was very hard that there must be such a difference in homes. If she could only live in a house like the Burt cottage, and have things nice about her as they did, and have her father and mother sit together and talk, as Mr. and Mrs. Burt did, she should be perfectly happy, Nettie told herself. Then she sprang up from the log and declared that she must not waste another minute of time; but that Jerry's plan was the best one she had ever heard, and she believed they could begin it.

With this thought still in mind, after the dinner dishes were carefully cleared away, and her mother, returned from the day's ironing, had been treated to a piece of the apple dumpling warmed over for her, and had said it was as nice a bit as she ever tasted, Nettie began on the subject which had been in her thoughts all day:

"What would you think of us young folks going into business?"

"Going into business!"

"Yes'm. Jerry and Norm and me. Jerry has a plan; he has been telling me about it this morning. It is nice if we can only carry it out; and I shouldn't wonder if we could. That is, if you think well of it."

"I begin to think there isn't much that you and Jerry can't do, with Norm, or with anybody else, if you try; and you both appear to be ready to try to do all you can for everybody."

Mrs. Decker's tone was so hearty and pleased, that you would not have known her for the same woman who looked forward dismally but a few weeks ago to Nettie's home-coming. Her heart had so warmed to the girl in her efforts for father and brother, that she was almost ready to agree to anything which she could have to propose. So Nettie, well pleased with this beginning, unfolded with great clearness and detail, Jerry's wonderful plan for not only catching Norm, but setting him up in business.

Mrs. Decker listened, and questioned and cross-questioned, sewing swiftly the while on Norm's jacket which had been torn, and which was being skilfully darned in view of the evening to be spent at the parsonage.

"Well," she said at last, "it looks wild to me, I own; I should as soon try to fly as of making anything like that work in this town; but then, you've made things work, you two, that I'd no notion could be done, and between you, you seem to kind of bewitch Norm. He's done things for you that I would no sooner have thought of asking of him than I would have asked him to fly up to the moon; and this may be another of them. Anyhow, if you've a mind to try it, I won't be the one to stop you. I've been that scared for Norm, that I'm ready for anything. Oh! the room, of course you may use it. If you wanted to have a circus in there, I think I'd agree, wild animals and all; I've had worse than wild animals in my day. No, your father won't object; he thinks what you do is about right, I guess. And for the matter of that, he doesn't object to anything nowadays; I don't know what to make of him."

The sentence ended with a long-drawn, troubled sigh.

Just what this strange change in her husband meant, Mrs. Decker could not decide; and each theory which she started in her mind about it, looked worse than the last.

Norm's collar was ready for him, so was his jacket. He was somewhat surly; the truth was, he had received what he called a "bid" to the merry-making which was to take place in the back room of the grocery, around the corner from Crossman's, and he was a good deal tried to think he had cut himself off by what he called a "spooney" promise, from enjoying the evening there. At the same time there was a certain sense of largeness in saying he could not come because he had received an invitation elsewhere, which gave him a momentary pleasure. To be sure the boys coaxed until they had discovered the place of his engagement, and joked him the rest of the time, until he was half-inclined to wish he had never heard of the parsonage; but for all that, a certain something in Norman which marked him as different from some boys, held him to his word when it was passed; and he had no thought of breaking from his engagement. It was an evening such as Norman had reason to remember. For the first time in his life he sat in a pleasantly furnished home, among ladies and gentlemen, and heard himself spoken to as one who "belonged."

Three ladies were there from the city, and two gentlemen whom Norman had never seen before; all friends of the Sherrills come out to spend a day with them. They were not only unlike any people whom he had ever seen before, but, if he had known it, unlike a great many ladies and gentlemen, in that their chief aim in life was to be found in their Master's service; and a boy about whom they knew nothing, save that he was poor, and surrounded by temptations, and Satan desired to have him, was in their eyes so much stray material which they were bound to bring back to the rightful owner if they could.

To this end they talked to Norman. Not in the form of a lecture, but with bright, winning words, on topics which he could understand, not only, but actually on certain topics about which he knew more than they. For instance, there was a cave about two miles from the town, of which they had heard, but had never seen and Norm had explored every crevice in it many a time. He knew on which side of the river it was located, whether the entrance was from the east or the south; just how far one could walk through it, just how far one could creep in it, after walking had become impossible, and a dozen other things which it had not occurred to him were of interest to anybody else. In fact, Norm discovered in the course of the hour that there was such a thing as conversation. Not that he made use of that word, in thinking it over; his thoughts, if they could have been seen, would have been something like this: "These are swell folks, but I can understand what they say, and they seem to understand what I say, and don't stare as though I was a wild animal escaped from the woods. I wonder what makes the difference between them and other folks?"

But when the music began! I have no words to describe to you what it was to Norm to sit close to an organ and hear its softest notes, and feel the thrill of its heavy bass tones, and be appealed to occasionally as to whether he liked this or that the best, and to have a piece sung because the player thought it would please him; she selected it that morning, she told him, with this thought in view.

"Decker, you ought to learn to play," said one of the guests who had watched him through the last piece. "You look music, right out of your eyes. Miss Sherrill, here is a pupil for you who might do you credit. Have you ever had any instrument, Decker?"

Then Norm came back to every-day life, and flushed and stammered. "No, he hadn't, and was not likely to;" and wondered what they would think if they were to see the corner grocery where he spent most of his leisure time.

The questioner laughed pleasantly. "Oh, I'm not so sure of that. I have a friend who plays the violin in a way to bring tears to people's eyes, and he never touched one until he was thirty years old; hadn't time until then. He was an apprentice, and had his trade to master, and himself to get well started in it before he had time for music; but when he came to leisure, he made music a delight to himself and to others."

"A great deal can be done with leisure time," said another of the guests. "Mr. Sherrill, you remember Myers, your college classmate? He did not learn to read, you know, until he was seventeen."

"What?" said Norm, astonished out of his diffidence; "didn't know how to read!"

"No," repeated the gentleman, "not until he was seventeen. He had a hard childhood—was kicked about in the world, with no leisure and no help, had to work evenings as well as days, but when he was seventeen he fell into kinder hands, and had a couple of hours each evening all to himself, and he mastered reading, not only, but all the common studies, and graduated from college with honor when he was twenty-six."

Now Norm had all his evenings to lounge about in, and had not known what to do with them; and he could read quite well.