I should think Jake Preble, now, was a real likely
fellow to marry."

"Jake Preble!" Such distaste animated the tone of that response that
Mariana involuntarily raised herself from her listening posture, and the
dishes clinked. "What's that? Didn't you hear suthin'? Why, Jake
Preble's a kind of a hind wheel. He goes rollin' along after t'others,
never askin' why nor wherefore, and he thinks it's his own free will. He
never so much as dreams 'tis the horse that's haulin' him."

"Well, what is 't he thinks 'tis that's haulin' him?" asked Sophronia,
who was not imaginative.

"Why, all I mean is, he don't take things for what they're wuth. He
believes every goose's a swan till it up and honks, and he's jest as
likely to think a swan's a goose."

"You don't mean he ain't suited with Mariana?"

"No, no. I mean Mariana's cosseted him and swep' his path afore him,
carryin' his victuals and cleanin' up the house when he's out hayin' or
cuttin' wood, till he thinks it ain't so bad to bach it after all. If
she'd just let him alone after Hattie died, and starved him out, he'd
ha'nted her place oftener'n she's been over to his, and 'twouldn't ha'
been long before he learnt the taste of her apple-pies and where they
ought to be made. Now he knows they're to be picked mostly off'n his
kitchen table when he comes in from work."

"Mercy, you don't mean to say you think it's all victuals, do you?"
inquired Sophronia, with her unctuous laugh. "You never had much opinion
o' menfolks, anyways, Lizzie Ann."

"Well, they've got to eat, ain't they?" inquired Lizzie Ann. "That's all
I say. Come, ain't you got your shoe on yet? Why, yes, you have. Come
along. There's a kind of chill in the air, if 'tis September."

Mariana heard them rising, Sophronia contributing soft thuds of a
good-sized middle-aged body and Lizzie with a light scramble suited to
her weight.

"Mercy!" said Sophronia, "ain't you stiff?"

Then they went on together, and Mariana heard in the near distance the
familiar patter dealing with Sophronia's proficiency in mock mince-pies.
They were safely away, but she did not move. The cool September breeze
rustled the blackberry-vines on her side of the wall, but it did not
chill her. She was hot with some emotion she could not name,--anger,
perhaps, though it hardly seemed like that, resentment that her friends
could talk her over; and some hurt in the very centre of feeling because
the shyness of her soul had been invade