“Will you come inside, Mis’ Carey?” she asked hospitably, “or do you want Lallie Joy to set you a chair on the grass, same as you had last time?”

“I always prefer the grass, Mrs. Popham,” smiled Mrs. Carey.  “As it’s the day for the fishman to come I thought we’d like an extra quart of milk for chowder.”

“I only hope he’ll make out to come,” was Mrs. Popham’s curt response.  “If I set out to be a fishman, I vow I’d be one!  Mr. Tubbs stays to home whenever he’s hayin’, or his wife’s sick, or it’s stormy, or the children want to go to the circus!”

Mrs. Carey laughed.  “That’s true; but as your husband reminded me last week, when Mr. Tubbs disappointed us, his fish is always fresh-caught, and good.”

“Oh! of course Mr. Popham would speak up for him!” returned his wife.  “I don’t see myself as it makes much diff’rence whether his fish is good or bad, if he stays to home with it!  Mebbe I look on the dark side a little mite; I can’t hardly help it, livin’ with Mr. Popham, and he so hopeful.”

“He keeps us all very merry at the Yellow House,” Mrs. Carey ventured.

“Yes, he would,” remarked Mrs. Popham drily, “but you don’t git it stiddy; hopefulness at meals, hopefulness evenin’s, an’ hopefulness nights!—­one everlastin’ stiddy stream of hopefulness!  He was jest so as a boy; always lookin’ on the bright side whether there was any or not.  His mother ‘n’ father got turrible sick of it; so much sunshine in the house made a continual drouth, so old Mis’ Popham used to say.  For her part, she said, she liked to think that, once in a while, there was a cloud that was a first-class cloud; a thick, black cloud, clean through to the back!  She was tired to death lookin’ for Ossian’s silver linin’s!  Lallie Joy’s real moody like me; I s’pose it’s only natural, livin’ with a father who never sees anything but good, no matter which way he looks.  There’s two things I trust I shan’t hear any more when I git to heaven,—­that’s ‘Cheer up Maria!’ an’ ‘It’s all for the best!’ As for Mr. Popham, he says any place’ll be heaven to him so long as I ain’t there, callin’ ‘Hurry up Ossian!’ so we have it, back an’ forth!”

“It’s a wonderful faculty, seeing the good in everything,” sighed Mrs. Carey.

“Wonderful tiresome,” returned Mrs. Popham, “though I will own up it’s Ossian’s only fault, and he can’t see his own misfortunes any clearer than he can see those of other folks.  His new colt run away with him last week and stove the mowin’ machine all to pieces.  ’Never mind, Maria!’ he says, ‘it’ll make fust-rate gear for a windmill!’ He’s out in the barn now, fussin’ over it; you can hear him singin’.  They was all here practicin’ for the Methodist concert last, night, an’ I didn’t sleep a wink, the tunes kep’ a-runnin’ in my head so!  They always git Ossian to sing ’Fly like a youthful hart or roe, over the hills where spices grow,’ an’ I tell him he’s too old; youthful harts an’ roes don’t fly over the hills wearin’ spectacles, I tell him, but he’ll go right on singin’ it till they have to carry him up on the platform in a wheeled chair!”