hev to go over and git him to drive 'em out. She's wed his onion
bed for him two summers, as I happen to know, for I've been ou' doors
more 'n common this summer, tryin' to fetch my constitution up. Diademy,
don't you want to look out the back way 'n' see if Rube's come home
yet?"

"He ain't," said old Mrs. Bascom, "so you needn't look; can't you see
the curtains is all down? He's gone up to the Mills, 'n' it's my opinion
he's gone to speak to the minister."

"He hed somethin' in the back o' the wagon covered up with an old linen
lap robe; 't ain't at all likely he 'd 'a' hed that if he'd ben goin' to
the minister's," objected Mrs. Jot.

"Anybody'd think you was born yesterday, to hear you talk, Diademy,"
retorted her mother-in-law. "When you 've set in one spot's long's I
hev, p'raps you'll hev the use o' your faculties! Men folks has more 'n
one way o' gettin' married, 'specially when they 're ashamed of it. ...
Well, I vow, there's the little Hobson girls comin' out o' the door
this minute, 'n' they 're all dressed up, and Mote don't seem to be with
'em."

Every woman in the room rose to her feet, and Diadema removed her
murderous eye from a fly which she had been endeavoring to locate for
some moments.

"I guess they 're goin' up to the church to meet their father 'n'
Eunice, poor little things," ventured the Widow Buzzell.

"P'raps they be," said old Mrs. Bascom sarcastically; "p'raps they be
goin' to church, takin' a three-quart tin pail 'n' a brown paper bundle
along with 'em. ... They 're comin' over the bridge, just as I s'posed.
... Now, if they come past this house, you head 'em off, Almiry, 'n' see
if you can git some satisfaction out of 'em. ... They ain't hardly old
enough to hold their tongues."

An exciting interview soon took place in the middle of the road, and
Almira reentered the room with the expression of one who had penetrated
the inscrutable and solved the riddle of the Sphinx. She had been
vouch-safed one of those gleams of light in darkness which almost dazzle
the beholder.

"That's about the confirmingest thing I've heern yet!" she ejaculated,
as she took off her shaker bonnet. "They say they're goin' up to their
aunt Hitty's to stay two days. They're dressed in their best, clean to
the skin, for I looked; 'n' it's their night gownds they've got in the
bundle. They say little Mote has gone to Union to stop all night with
his uncle Abijah, 'n' that leaves Rube all alone, for the smit