frame and
bone to put it on; but it wouldn't surprise me a bit if you was to
gain twenty, or even twenty-five, pounds in eighteen months, anyway;
and more than that you ought not to ask, Thomas, considerin' your
height and general build."

"Isn't Marietta Himes a good deal of a freethinker?" asked Thomas.

"A what?" cried Asaph. "You mean an infidel?"

"No," said Thomas, "I don't charge nobody with nothin' more than
there's reason for; but they do say that she goes sometimes to one
church and sometimes to another, and that if there was a Catholic
church in this village she would go to that. And who's goin' to say
where a woman will turn up when she don't know her own mind better
than that?"

Asaph colored a little. "The place where Marietta will turn up,"
said he, warmly, "is on a front seat in the kingdom of heaven; and
if the people that talk about her will mend their ways, they'll see
that I am right. You need not trouble yourself about that, Thomas.
Marietta Himes is pious to the heel."

Mr. Rooper now shifted himself a little on the bench and crossed one
leg over the other. "Now look here, Asaph," he said, with a little
more animation than he had yet shown, "supposin' all you say is
true, have you got any reason to think that Mrs. Himes ain't
satisfied with things as they are?"

"Yes, I have," said Asaph. "And I don't mind tellin' you that the
thing she's least satisfied with is me. She wants a man in the
house; that is nateral. She wouldn't be Marietta Himes if she
didn't. When I come to live with her I thought the whole business
was settled; but it isn't. I don't suit her. I don't say she's
lookin' for another man, but if another man was to come along, and
if he was the right kind of a man, it's my opinion she's ready for
him. I wouldn't say this to everybody, but I say it to you, Thomas
Rooper, 'cause I know what kind of a man you are."

Mr. Rooper did not return the compliment. "I don't wonder your
sister ain't satisfied with you," he said, "for you go ahead of all
the lazy men I ever saw yet. They was sayin' down at the tavern
yesterday--only yesterday--that you could do less work in more time
than anybody they ever saw before."

"There's two ways of workin'," said Asaph. "Some people work with
their hands and some with their heads."

Thomas grimly smiled. "It strikes me," said he, "that the most
head-work you do is with your jaws."

Asaph was not the man to take offence readily, especially when