Re-Creations by Grace Livingston Hill Page B

something good would come of it, although he looked with an anxious eye at the borrowed car and wondered what he would do if Carey should break it and be liable for its price.
    Harry turned to and helped with the unloading, and both were persuaded to come in barely for five minutes’ bit at the good dinner that was already on the table. They dispatched it with eagerness and little ceremony and were off for another load, asking to have their pudding saved until they returned, as every minute must count before dark, and they had no time for pudding just now.
    When the boys were away again, Cornelia began to talk with her father about Carey. She told him a little of their talk that morning and persuaded him not to say anything for a while to stop Carey from working at the garage until he had earned enough to buy some new clothes and get a little start. The father reluctantly consented, although he declared it would not do any good, for Carey would spend every cent he earned on his wild young friends, and if he bought any clothes, they would be evening clothes. He had seen before how it worked. Nevertheless, although he spoke discouragedly, Cornelia knew that he would stand by her in her attempt to help Carey back to respectability, and she went about clearing off the supper table with a lighter heart.
    After supper she saw to it that there was plenty of hot water for baths when the boys got through their work, and she got out an old flannel shirt and a pair of Carey’s trousers and set a patch and mended a tear and put them in order for work. Then she had the ironing board and a basin and soap ready for cleaning his other clothes when he came in. Carey-like, he had gone to haul all that stone in the only suit he had to wear for good. She sighed as she thought what a task was before her. For something inside Carey needed taking out and adjusting before Carey would ever be a dependable, practical member of the family. Nevertheless, she was proud of him as she listened to the thud of each load and glanced out of the front window at the ever-increasing pile of stones that now ran over the tiny front yard and was encroaching on the path that led to the back door.
    “Gotta get ‘em all, or somebody else’ll get onto it and take ‘em,” declared Harry when he came in for a drink, his face and hands black and a happy, manly look around his mouth and eyes.
    It was ten o’clock when the last load was dumped, by the light of all the lamps in the house brought out into the yard, and it was more than an hour later before the boys got back from returning the truck to its owner. They were tired and dirty almost beyond recognition but happier than they had been for many a day, and glad of the bit of a feast that their sister had set out for them, and of the hot baths.
    “Well, if we don’t have a fireplace now, it won’t be my fault!” declared Harry, mopping a warm red face with a handkerchief that had seen better days. “Gee! We certainly did work. Carey can work, too, when he tries, I’ll say.” And there was a note of admiration in his voice for his elder brother, which was not missed by either the brother or the watching sisters. Everybody slept well that night, and they were all so weary that they came near to oversleeping the next morning.
    It was after the children had gone to school and Carey was off getting lime and sand and cement for his work that Cornelia went out into the backyard to hang up the curtains that she had just washed, and turning toward the line, she encountered a pair of curious eyes under the ruffle of a pretty calico nightcap whose owner was standing on the neighboring back porch, the one to the left, where Louise had said the carpenter lived.
    “Good morning!” said the other woman briskly, as if she had a perfect right to be intimate. “You all ain’t going to build, are you? I see all them stones come last night, and I couldn’t make out what in life you all was going to do with ‘em, lessen