XIII. A Country Chevalier

It was early in August when Mrs. Wealthy Brooks announced her speedy
return from Boston to Edgewood.

"It's jest as well Rose is comin' back," said Mr. Wiley to his wife. "I
never favored her goin' to Boston, where that rosy-posy Claude feller
is. When he was down here he was kep' kind o' tied up in a box-stall,
but there he's caperin' loose round the pastur'."

"I should think Rose would be ashamed to come back, after the way she's
carried on," remarked Mrs. Wiley, "but if she needed punishment I guess
she's got it bein' comp'ny-keeper to Wealthy Ann Brooks. Bein' a church
member in good an' reg'lar standin', I s'pose Wealthy Ann'll go to
heaven, but I can only say that it would be a sight pleasanter place for
a good many if she did n't."

"Rose has be'n foolish an' flirty an' wrong-headed," allowed her
grandfather; "but it won't do no good to treat her like a hardened
criminile, same's you did afore she went away. She ain't hardly got her
wisdom teeth cut, in love affairs! She ain't broke the laws of the
State o' Maine, nor any o' the ten commandments; she ain't disgraced the
family, an' there's a chance for her to reform, seein' as how she ain't
twenty year old yet. I was turrible wild an' hot-headed myself afore you
ketched me an' tamed me down."

"You ain't so tame now as I wish you was," Mrs. Wiley replied testily.

"If you could smoke a clay pipe 't would calm your nerves, mother, an'
help you to git some philosophy inter you; you need a little philosophy
turrible bad."

"I need patience consid'able more," was Mrs. Wiley's withering retort.

"That's the way with folks," said Old Kennebec reflectively, as he went
on peacefully puffing. "If you try to indoose 'em to take an int'rest in
a bran'-new virtue, they won't look at it; but they 'll run down a side
street an' buy half a yard more o' some turrible old shop-worn trait
o' character that they've kep' in stock all their lives, an' that
everybody's sick to death of. There was a man in Gard'ner--"

But alas! the experiences of the Gardiner man, though told in the same
delightful fashion that had won Mrs. Wiley's heart many years
before, now fell upon the empty air. In these years of Old Kennebec's
"anecdotage," his pipe was his best listener and his truest confidant.

Mr. Wiley's constant intercessions with his wife made Rose's home-coming
somewhat easier, and the sight of her own room and belongings soothed
her troubled spi