CHAPTER VIII.
After this, having broken the ice, Jed, as Captain Sam Hunniwell might have expressed it, "kept the channel clear." When he stopped at the kitchen door of his tenants' house he no longer invariably refused to come in and sit down.

When he inquired if Mrs.
Armstrong had any errands to be done he also asked if there were any chores he might help out with.

When the old clock--a genuine Seth Willard--on the wall of the living-room refused to go, he came in, sat down, took the refractory timepiece in his arms and, after an hour of what he called "putterin' and jackleggin'," hung it up again apparently in as good order as ever.

During the process he whistled a little, sang a hymn or two, and talked with Barbara, who found the conversation a trifle unsatisfactory.
"He hardly EVER finished what he was going to say," she confided to her mother afterward.

"He'd start to tell me a story and just as he got to the most interesting part something about the clock would seem to--you know--trouble him and he'd stop and, when he began again, he'd be singing instead of talking.