se.

"And how are you getting on, Michael?" said she. "I suppose everybody is
very busy preparing for the master's wedding."

"The what!" exclaimed Mike, his eyebrows elevating themselves to such a
degree that his hat rose.

"Mr. Haverley's marriage with Miss Dora Bannister. Isn't that to take
place very soon, Michael?"

Mike put his pie on the post of the barn gate, took off his hat, and
wiped his brow with his shirt-sleeve.

"Bless my evarlastin' soul, Mrs. Flower! who on this earth told
you that?"

"Is it then such a great secret? Miss Panney told it to me not twenty
minutes ago."

Mike put on his hat; he took his pie from the post, and held it,
first in one hand and then in the other. He seemed unable to express
what he thought.

"Look a here, Mrs. Flower," he said presently, "she told you that, did
she?"

"She really did," was the answer.

"Well, then," said Mike, "the long an' the short of it is, she lies.
'Tain't the fust time that old Miss Panney has done that sort of thing.
She comes to me one day, more than six year ago, an' says, 'Mike,' says
she, 'why don't you marry Phoebe Moxley?' ''Cause I don't want to marry
her, nor nobody else,' says I. 'But you ought to,' said she, 'for she's
a good woman an' a nice washer an' ironer, an' you'd do well together.'
'Don't want no washin' nor ironin', nor no Phoebe, neither,' says I.
But she didn't mind nothin' what I said, an' goes an' tells everybody
that me an' Phoebe was goin' to be married; an' then it was we did git
married, jest to stop people talkin' so much about it, an' now look at
us. Me never so much as gittin' a bite of corn-bread, an' she a
boardin' the minister! Jes' you take my word for it, Mrs. Flower, old
Miss Panney wants Miss Dora to marry him, an' she's goin' about tellin'
people, thinkin' that after a while they'll do it jes' 'cause everybody
'spects them to."

"But don't you think they intend to marry, Mike?" forgetting to address
him by his full name.

Mike was about to strike the pie in his right hand with his left, in
order to give emphasis to his words, but he refrained in time.

"Don't believe one cussed word of it," said he. "Mr. Haverley ain't the
man to do that sort of thing without makin' some of his 'rangements p'int
that way, an' none of his 'rangements do p'int that way. If he'd been
goin' to git married, he'd told me, you bet, an' we'd laid out the farm
work more suitable for a weddin' than it is laid out. I ain't goi