they ain't crazy, why they goin' to have stone floors? Why
they got them big old stone jars that come yesterday? Why ain't they
goin' to have no stair carpets? Why ain't they goin' to have no
window-curtings?"

"They are, too, crazy, and they gone and built that old vanilla right on
where we used to pick checkerberries, and he's goin' to put a outlandish
Dago top right on this here well, the kind they have in It'ly where they
all wear rags and eat lemon-skins."

"Nobody won't keep me from drinkin' out of this well when it's got a
Dago top."

"Nobody won't never stop me from goin' on Cedar Plains if I've got a
mind ter. I got as good a right as they got."

"I'd just as soon heave a rock right now at that there vanilla. I don't
care for it. I ain't afraid of no tin-faced I-talian dudes."

At last came a letter announcing the proposed arrival of the villa
furniture. The buckboard with the white horse halted again under the
tulip-tree and this time Mr. Pawket with unwonted sense of haste
intercepted the letter. The Rural, whose Rough Rider hat was now
discarded for a black-velvet tam-o'-shanter adorned with a coquettish
pink rose, rigidly resigned it to his eager grasp.

Mr. Pawket, for all his preoccupation, was not blind to the pink rose;
he quickly got its sense and made the usual deduction.

"When does the weddin' take place?" he asked, facetiously.

The rigidity around the corners of the Rural's mouth did not lessen as
she replied with the evasion Brook Center found piquant, "Next day after
Never."

Having successfully warded off inquiry as to personal plans, the Rural
returned to her rightful prerogatives of newsmonger, demanding:

"How's Mis' Pawket's Everything gittin' along? I got a couple
shoe-buttons fer her. She'd better hurry up and finish it; I hear there
is four more in town startin' Everything Jars. Seems there's a sort of
rivalry of who's goin' to be the first to get a Everything into the
vanilla."

A look of calamity shaded Mr. Pawket's face, but he accepted the two
shoe-buttons with dignified reserve.

"All she needs now is a harness buckle and a couple peanut-shells," he
explained, nonchalantly. "I can get them fer her easy enough; the twins
have been helping her some, one with a sinker and the other with a hook
and eye. 'Tain't likely any one can git their jar in afore hern. I
wouldn't advise nobody to nerve themselves up to it. There's been
rumors," added Mr. Pawket, gravely--"there's be