Dab Kinzer | Page 2

but it's too big for its fences, just as I'm
too big for my clothes. Ham's house is three times as large as ours, but
it looks as if it had grown too fast. It hasn't any paint to speak of, nor
any blinds. It looks as if somebody'd just built it there, and then forgot
it, and gone oft and left it out of doors."
Dabney's four sisters had all come into the world before him; but he
was as tall as any of them, and was frequently taken by strangers for a
good two years older than he was. It was sometimes very hard for him,
a boy of fifteen, to live up to what was expected of those extra two
years.
Mrs. Kinzer still kept him in roundabouts; but they did not seem to
hinder his growth at all, if that was her object in so doing.
There was no such thing, however, as keeping the four girls in
roundabouts of any kind; and, what between them and their mother, the
pleasant and tidy little Kinzer homestead, with its snug parlor and its
cosey bits of rooms and chambers, seemed to nestle away, under the
shadowy elms and sycamores, smaller and smaller with every year that
came.
It was a terribly tight fit for such a family, anyway; and, now that
Dabney was growing at such a rate, there was no telling what they
would all come to. But Mrs. Kinzer came at last to the rescue; and she
summoned her eldest daughter, Miranda, to her aid.
A very notable woman was the widow. When the new railway cut off
part of the old farm, she had split up the slice of land between the iron
track and the village into "town lots," and had sold them all off by the
time the railway company paid her for the "damage" it had done the
property.
The whole Kinzer family gained visibly in plumpness that year, except,
perhaps, Dabney.
Of course the condition and requirements of Ham Morris and his big
farm, just over the north fence, had not escaped such a pair of eyes as

those of the widow; and the very size of his great barn of a house
finally settled his fate for him.
A large, quiet, unambitious, but well-brought-up and industrious young
man was Hamilton Morris, and he had not the least idea of the good in
store for him for several months after Mrs. Kinzer decided to marry
him to her daughter Miranda; but all was soon settled. Dab, of course,
had nothing to do with the wedding arrangements, and Ham's share was
somewhat contracted. Not but what he was at the Kinzer house a good
deal; nor did any of the other girls tell Miranda how very much he was
in the way. He could talk, however; and one morning, about a fortnight
before the day appointed, he said to Miranda and her mother,--
"We can't have so very much of a wedding: your house is so small, and
you've chocked it so full of furniture. Right down nice furniture it is too;
but there's so much of it, I'm afraid the minister'll have to stand out in
the front yard."
"The house'll do for this time," replied Mrs. Kinzer. "There'll be room
enough for everybody. What puzzles me is Dab."
"What about Dab?" asked Ham.
"Can't find a thing to fit him," said Dab's mother. "Seems as if he were
all odd sizes, from head to foot."
"Fit him?" exclaimed Ham. "Oh, you mean ready-made goods! Of
course you can't. He'll have to be measured by a tailor, and have his
new suit built for him."
"Such extravagance!" emphatically remarked Mrs. Kinzer.
"Not for rich people like you, and for a wedding," replied Ham; "and
Dab's a growing boy. Where is he now? I'm going to the village, and I'll
take him right along with me."
There seemed to be no help for it; but that was the first point relating to
the wedding, concerning which Ham Morris was permitted to have

exactly his own way. His success made Dab Kinzer a fast friend of his
for life, and that was something. There was also something new and
wonderful to Dabney himself, in walking into a tailor's shop, picking
out cloth to please himself, and being so carefully measured all over.
He stretched and stretched himself in all directions, to make sure
nothing should turn out too small. At the end of it all, Ham said to
him,--
"Now, Dab, my boy, this suit is to be a present from me to you, on
Miranda's account."
Dab colored and hesitated for a moment: but it seemed all right, he
thought; and so he came frankly out with,--
"Thank you, Ham. You always was