plenty good enough for him. And when he goes to town Jake takes care
to tie his team in front of Billy Evans' place instead of the hotel.

"Not that I can't take a drink or two and stop," he explained to Billy,
"but I have good cider and buttermilk and Susie's grape juice to home
and the smartest of us ain't any too wise while we stand beside a bar.
And I'd ruther go home dead than go back to Susie and the children the
least bit silly with liquor. When the Almighty sends a man like me a
family like mine He's got something in His mind and I ain't agoing to
spoil things just for a drink or two of slops."

So on rainy days Billy's office is the gathering place for such men as
find the atmosphere in the hotel and blacksmith shop a little too
fragrantly spirited for their eventual domestic happiness.

Not that Billy is a teetotaler. No, indeed. He has his drink whenever
he wants it. And he good-naturedly permits such staggering wretches as
the hotel refuses to accommodate to sleep it off in his barns. And he
is the only man in Green Valley who ever seriously hired Hank Lolly and
kept him sober twelve hours at a stretch. The other business men make
considerable fun of Billy's hired help; the trifling boys he hires,
boys that everybody else has tried and sent packing. Billy says
nothing though he did explain fully to Grandma Wentworth once.

"You see it's like this, Grandma. I ain't fixed to pay fancy wages
just yet and those kids that everybody runs down ought to be off the
streets doing something. Of course some of them _are_ trifling. But I
ain't such a stickler for sharp-edged goodness myself nor in any way at
all virtuous. I'm terrible easy-going myself and I know just how kids
like Charlie Pinley feel working for a man, a careful, exact man like