The man who put the articles in the car was much interested in the Dirty Boy barrel.  “You’d ought to have walked to Greentown and carried that one in your arms,” he jeered.  “What is the precious thing, anyway?”

“Don’t you mind what it is,” responded young Perkins.  “Jest you keep everybody ‘n’ everything from teching it!  Does this lot o’ stuff have to be shifted ’tween here and Greentown?”

“No; not unless we git kind o’ dull and turn it upside down jest for fun.”

“I guess you’re dull consid’able often, by the way things look when you git through carryin’ ’em, on this line,” said Perkins, who had no opinion of the freight department of the A.&B.  The answer, though not proper to record in this place, was worthy of Perkins’s opponent, who had a standing grudge against the entire race of expressmen and carters who brought him boxes and barrels to handle.  It always seemed to him that if they were all out of the country or dead he would have no work to do.

XI

THE SERVICE ON THE THRESHOLD

From this point on, the flitting went easily and smoothly enough, and the transportation of the Carey family itself to Greentown, on a mild budding day in April, was nothing compared to the heavy labor that had preceded it.  All the goods and chattels had been despatched a week before, so that they would be on the spot well in advance, and the actual flitting took place on a Friday, so that Gilbert would have every hour of his vacation to assist in the settling process.  He had accepted an invitation to visit a school friend at Easter, saying to his mother magisterially:  “I didn’t suppose you’d want me round the house when you were getting things to rights; men are always in the way; so I told Fred Bascom I’d go home with him.”

“Home with Fred!  Our only man!  Sole prop of the House of Carey!” exclaimed his mother with consummate tact.  “Why, Gilly dear, I shall want your advice every hour!  And who will know about the planting,—­for we are only ‘women folks’; and who will do all the hammering and carpenter work?  You are so wonderful with tools that you’ll be worth all the rest of us put together!”

“Oh, well, if you need me so much as that I’ll go along, of course,” said Gilbert, “but Fred said his mother and sisters always did this kind of thing by themselves.”

“‘By themselves,’ in Fred’s family,” remarked Mrs. Carey, “means a butler, footman, and plenty of money for help of every sort.  And though no wonder you’re fond of Fred, who is so jolly and such good company, you must have noticed how selfish he is!”

“Now, mother, you’ve never seen Fred Bascom more than half a dozen times!”

“No; and I don’t remember at all what I saw in him the last five of them, for I found out everything needful the first time he came to visit us!” returned Mrs. Carey quietly.  “Still, he’s a likable, agreeable sort of boy.”