The Mena weekly star., 1896-12-09
BOARD.

hIS. bIusH sdt uOWu Tn kltc1en chair heavily. Ut isn't any use, pa she said. 'I don't know how we're go- ing to get along with him-I don't, for the life of mel" She looked tragic. She weighed 200 pounds, and when gloom took possession of her it was a serious matter.
 Mir. Brush gave an uneasy chuckle. He was blowing for winter wheat, but he had come in for a drink of milk, and sat down. Out by the slnokehouse Ed 'ard sat sprawled out, eating large slice of bread and butter spread with warm apple-sauce.
 Whats the matter with him, ma ?'' said Mir. Brush. The Brushes had never had any children, but to each other they were pa and ma. i've seen worse looking children" Mir. Brush asserted.
 Where ?" his wife demanded, and he grinned feebly.
 "Tother day" he persisted, "I was looking at him, and-and seemed as though he looked real kind O pretty"
 Mrs. Brush laughed shortly. Pitch dark, wasn't it?" she observed. Then she fell to serious speech. Its not his looks," she said. ''I don't care anything about that: I'm not overburdened with beauty myself. It's him. Oh, dear me, ," ahe burst out, shaken out of her GUS tomary calmness. "I'm most afraid we made an awful mistake, taking himl"
 "Pshawl Pshawl" said Mir. Brush. Slow consternation sat upon him.
 T guess we did. He's not like us, pa; he isn't one of us. 1 don't know bow to take him. nor how to talk to him, either. He's been here n month. and I haven't spoken a natural word to him, nor he to me. feel as if he was standing off from us and looking us through and through with those eyes of his. l don't know how to explain it. just, but I'm kind of afraid of him."
 MT. Brush essayed response which did not come. The truth is he, too, was afraid of Ed'ard
 ''If that was all" Mrs. Brush went on. 'why, l could stand it; I hope I've got some principle. But I've tried to see some promising sign in him, and can't"
 Mir. Brush reused to action. Look at his bringing up," he said.
 'I consider it." his wife answered, "and it's just that makes me so dis couraged, pa. If we could only have he wasn't more than four years old, it might have been different; but Gene Huntoon got him and drove him around with him on his meat wagon, and set him to work in his butcher shop when he wasn't much more'n a baby. And Genes wife worked him round the house. don't know much about them. but do know they aren't any kind of folks. And he's been there seven years, and mixed with rough people, and run wild"
 "Poor little fellow!"
 "Yes, poor little fellow. But it's made him so that I ain't equal to him, pa. He doesn't mind half the time; he doesn't know how to mind, actually. And I haven't tried to make him, for I feel just as though. come to hand-to- hand tussle"--Mrs. Brush smiled grimly -'sit wouldn't be me that would come ont ahead. Seems as though he isn't afraid of anything on earth. And there isn't anything in him to appeal to, pa doesn't seem to be.
 "Iamilton's a city-'tis, compared to here-and he's learned all the mischief there was going, guess. He's chock- full of sharpness and cunning. He's II years old, and I feel as if he was hundred, more or less.
 ''I don't know that we had any call to take him." Mrs. Brush pursued. Maria Huntocss's dying didn't put us under any kind of obligations. If there was ever any obligation 1t was when Ed'ard's mother died. and don't know that there was then; she wasn't enough relation to me so l can track it up. hardly. AnG If Gene Huntoon took