flow from his elemental view of life, is Abel's own belief in human kindliness. I will not maintain that his outer and material welfare is advanced thereby. It is not given to all to believe in or rely upon elemental honesty. We are so habituated, most of us, to the money-suckers, that we insensibly assume an attitude of defense, forgetting that some simple natures remain human and honest to the end.
No credit is due me if I escaped this pitfall with Abel. It is due to his own ingenuousness. I had myself from very shame, to suggest that the price of the milk daily distributed among his coterie of cottagers (capable, unlike the city brand, of covering itself overnight with a yellow blanket of thick cream), should be raised from five to six cents per quart, and again on a later occasion to seven. I hope the neighbors never found me out, but it really lay heavy on my conscience to pay for this pure, country-grass quality little more than half what our thin, snobbish, Toronto variety costs.
Eggs too, remained stationary in price, though on moonlit evenings (so conducive to confidences), when Abel rowed me over to
