A NEW BOY AND AN OLD ONE A boy in a blue serge suit sat on the second tier of seats of an otherwise empty grand-stand and, with his straw hat pulled well over his eyes, watched the progress of a horse-drawn mower about a field.

The horse was a big, well-fed chestnut, and as he walked slowly along he bobbed his head rhythmically.

In the seat of the mower perched a thin little man in a pair of blue overalls and a shirt which had also been blue at one time, but which was now faded almost white.

A broad-brimmed straw hat of the sort affected by farmers, protected his head from the noonday sun.

Between the overalls and the rusty brogans on his feet several inches of bare ankle intervened, and, as he paraded slowly around the field, almost the only sign of life he showed was when he occasionally stooped to brush a mosquito from these exposed portions of his anatomy.