kind o' made my
toes curl up."

But he went resolutely out to work again, and here he was chopping wood
in old man Bacon's yard, thinking busily on the talk which had just
passed between him and Marietta.

"By jingo!" he said all at once, stopping short, with the ax on his
shoulder. "If I hadn't 'a' been robbed I wouldn't 'a' come here--I
never'd met Merry. Thunder and jimson root! Wasn't that a narrow
escape?"

And then he laughed so heartily that the girl looked out of the window
again to see what in the world he was doing. He had his hat in his hand
and was whacking his thigh with it.

"Lyman Gilman, what in the world ails you to-day? It's perfectly
ridiculous the way you yell and talk t' y'rself out there on the chips.
You beat the hens, I declare if you don't."

Lime put on his hat and walked up to the window, and, resting his great
bare arms on the sill, and his chin on his arms, said:

"Merry, I'm goin' to tackle 'Dad' this afternoon. He'll be settin' up
the new seeder, and I'm goin' t' climb right on the back of his neck.
He's jest _got_ t' give me a chance."

Marietta looked sober in sympathy.

"Well! P'raps it's best to have it over with, Lime, but someway I feel
kind o' scary about it."

Lime stood for a long time looking in at the window, watching the
light-footed girl as she set the table in the middle of the sun-lighted
kitchen floor. The kettle hissed, the meat sizzled, sending up a
delicious odor; a hen stood in the open door and sang a sort of cheery
half-human song, while to and fro moved the sweet-faced, lithe and
powerful girl, followed by the smiling eyes at the window.

"Merry, you look purty as a picture. You look just like the wife I be'n
a-huntin' for all these years, sure 's shootin'."

Marietta colored with pleasure.

"Does Dad pay you to stand an' look at me an' say pretty things t' the
cook?"

"No, he don't. But I'm willin' t' do it without pay. I could jest stand
here till kingdom come an' look at you. Hello! I hear a wagon. I guess I
better hump into that wood-pile."

"I think so, too. Dinner's most ready, and Dad'll be here soon."

Lime was driving away furiously at a tough elm log when Farmer Bacon
drove into the yard with a new seeder in his wagon. Lime whacked away
busily while Bacon stabled the team, and in a short time Marietta
called, in a long-drawn, musical fashion:

"Dinner-r-r!"

After sozzling their faces at the well the two men went in and sat down
at