with a salt fish twice a day under
ord'nary circumstances," Cephas confided to his father with a valiant
air that he never wore in Deacon Baxter's presence; "but I've got a
reason, known to nobody but myself, for wantin' to stan' well with the
old man for a spell longer. If ever I quit wantin' to stan' well with
him, he'll get his comeuppance, short an sudden!"

"Speakin' o' standin' well with folks, Phil Perry's kind o' makin' up to
Patience Baxter, ain't he, Cephas?" asked Uncle Bart guardedly. "Mebbe
you wouldn't notice it, hevin' no partic'lar int'rest, but your
mother's kind o got the idee into her head lately, an' she's turrible
far-sighted."

"I guess it's so!" Cephas responded gloomily. "It's nip an' tuck 'tween
him an' Mark Wilson. That girl draws 'em as molasses does flies! She
does it 'thout liftin' a finger, too, no more 'n the molasses does. She
just sets still an' IS! An' all the time she's nothin' but a flighty
little red-headed spitfire that don't know a good husband when she sees
one. The feller that gits her will live to regret it, that's my opinion!"
And Cephas thought to himself: "Good Lord, don't I wish I was
regrettin' it this very minute!"

"I s'pose a girl like Phoebe Day'd be consid'able less trouble to live
with?" ventured Uncle Bart.

"I never could take any fancy to that tow hair o' hern! I like the color
well enough when I'm peeling it off a corn cob, but I don't like it on a
girl's head," objected Cephas hypercritically. "An' her eyes hain't
got enough blue in 'em to be blue: they're jest like skim-milk. An' she
keeps her mouth open a little mite all the time, jest as if there wa'n't
no good draught through, an' she was a-tryin' to git air. An' 't was
me that begun callin' her 'Feeble Phoebe in school, an' the scholars'll
never forgit it; they'd throw it up to me the whole 'durin' time if I
should go to work an' keep company with her!"

"Mebbe they've forgot by this time," Uncle Bart responded hopefully;
"though 't is an awful resk when you think o' Companion Pike! Samuel he
was baptized and Samuel he continued to be, 'till he married the Widder
Bixby from Waterboro. Bein' as how there wa'n't nothin' partic'ly
attractive 'bout him,--though he was as nice a feller as ever
lived,--somebody asked her why she married him, an' she said her cat
hed jest died an' she wanted a companion. The boys never let go o' that
story! Samuel Pike he ceased to be thirty year ago, an' Companion Pike
he's