re than your father, the poor Captain, were, as
all them little grass buttons argueth. Now, miss, if I thought you had
head-piece enough to keep good counsel and ensue it, maybe I could tell
you a thing as would make your hair creep out of them coorous hitch-ups,
and your heart a'most bust them there braids of fallallies."

"Why, what in the world do you mean?" I asked, being startled by the old
man's voice and face.

"Nothing, miss, nothing. I was only a-joking. If you bain't come to no
more discretion than that--to turn as white as the clerk's smock-frock
of a Easter-Sunday--why, the more of a joke one has, the better, to
bring your purty color back to you. Ah! Polly of the mill was the maid
for color--as good for the eyesight as a chaney-rose in April. Well,
well, I must get on with her grave; they're a-coming to speak the good
word over un on sundown."

He might have known how this would vex and perplex me. I could not bear
to hinder him in his work--as important as any to be done by man for
man--and yet it was beyond my power to go home and leave him there,
and wonder what it was that he had been so afraid to tell. So I quietly
said, "Then I will wish you a very good evening again, Mr. Rigg, as you
are too busy to be spoken with." And I walked off a little way, having
met with men who, having begun a thing, needs must have it out, and
fully expecting him to call me back. But Jacob only touched his hat, and
said, "A pleasant evening to you, ma'am."

Nothing could have made me feel more resolute than this did. I did not
hesitate one moment in running back over the stile again, and demanding
of Jacob Rigg that he should tell me whether he meant any thing or
nothing; for I was not to be played with about important matters, like
the boys in the church who were cracking nuts.

"Lord! Lord, now!" he said, with his treddled heel scraping the shoulder
of his shining spade; "the longer I live in this world, the fitter I
grow to get into the ways of the Lord. His ways are past finding out,
saith King David: but a man of war, from his youth upward, hath no
chance such as a gardening man hath. What a many of them have I found
out!"

"What has that got to do with it!" I cried. "Just tell me what it was
you were speaking of just now."

"I was just a-thinking, when I looked at you, miss," he answered, in the
prime of leisure, and wiping his forehead from habit only, not because
he wanted it, "how little us knows of the tim