"It isn't that he is conceited--the boy isn't that at all.

He just seems to have too little faith in God and too much in the ability of John Barclay.

He thinks he can beat the game--can take out more happiness for himself than he puts in for others." The wife looked up and put back her sunbonnet as she said, "Yes, I believe his mother thinks something of the kind." One of the things that surprised John when he came home from the university was the prominence of Lige Bemis in the town.

When John left Sycamore Ridge to go to school, Bemis was a drunken sign-painter married to a woman who a few years before had been the scandal of half a dozen communities.

And now though Mrs.Bemis was still queen only of the miserable unpainted Bemis domicile in the sunflowers at the edge of town, Lige Bemis politically was a potentate of some power.