anything and he knows it. And I'll be goshed if I don't think he's
improving. He don't need a jag near so often as he used to and I can
trust him now with any kind of work. Why, only last week I gave him a
moving job, a big one, and sent him off twenty miles with my two best
teams. And he brought those loads of furniture back O. K., dry and
without a scratch, though I couldn't sleep all night listening to the
buckets of rain dashing against the house and thinking of Hank drunk
out there in it with the furniture and wagons in splinters and the
horses dead maybe. And honest, when I saw him pull up into the barns,
I just hauled him off that seat and--well--I just said things, told him
what I thought of him and how I appreciated what he'd done. 'And now,
Hank,' I says, 'you can have the greatest old jag you've ever planned
on for this.'

"And I'm goshed if he didn't laugh out kind of funny and says he,
'Billy, I'm so goldarned wet right now that I couldn't stand another
drop of wetness anywhere. But all these five hours that the rain was
a-sloshing me I kept thinking of them there apple dumplings with cream
that Mrs. Evans makes (Hank always calls the old woman Mrs. Evans).
So, Billy, if it's all the same to you and I could get full on them
there apple dumplings, why, them's my choice.'

"Well--say, I just jumped to the telephone and I guess the old woman
was making apple dumplings before I got through talking. Anyway, Hank
filled up so that he said he felt like a flour barrel with an apple
tree a-sprouting out of it. And Doc Philipps says it's a good sign,
Hank liking sweet things that way, because a man soaked in alcohol
can't abide sweets.

"And so that's Hank. Now this week I hired that little spindle-legged