MARY PICKLE. 371 



daughter appeared to be proud of him, possibly on 

 account of his simple ways and old fashioned man- 

 ners. They kept him well dressed, and every Sunday 

 morning both of them walked arm in arm with him 

 to service. At such times, he donned his broad cloth 

 suit, long since shiny with age, a high collar and 

 black stock. Poor simple old man, he has long since 

 gone to his rest. He was a shiftless body, but he 

 died without an enemy, which is something that few 

 of us can say. 



"The week after I returned from Buffalo with 

 Champ, I learned that Lem was going with Mary 

 Pickle, and I did not like it. His mother was the 

 first one that told me. She drove into the stable 

 bright and early one morning, and, taking me aside, 

 told me all of her troubles. Now, while Helen was 

 my sister, we had never been very close, as she was 

 married when I was a little tot, and when I began to 

 grow up, a look from her would make the chills run 

 up and down my backbone. She told me how she 

 wanted her Lem to marry the Leroy girl and with 

 her he would get a farm as large as their own, just 

 as soon as the old man 'turned up his toes/ as she 

 put it, and it would kill her if he threw himself away 

 on that Pickle girl. I could see she was worried, and 

 had been for some time, when without a whimper 

 she sat down and went on to tell how she had been 

 heading Lem off all over the village. 



"That did not interest me very much, but when 

 she began to make unkind remarks about Mary 

 Pickle, because she had to work for her living, and 

 her father being 'no account/ something inside 

 prompted me to take her part, and I just up and told 



