new dress because she was going to be
married to him; but in the presence of a custom so firmly entrenched
behind the traditions of respectability, he knew that protest would be
useless. Judy would check out her unromantic person in wedding finery
because finery was customary on such occasions.

"Of course we couldn't dress just alike, Abel," replied Blossom. His
question had seemed foolish to her and her usual soft solemnity was
ruffled by a passing irritation. "Judy's frock will be green, but she
wants bretelles like these on it."

"Bretelles?" he repeated as incredulously as if he had possessed any but
the vaguest idea of the article the word described. "Why didn't she wait
until she was married, and then I'd have bought them for her," he added.

"Of course she wants her wedding clothes--all girls do," said Blossom,
invoking tradition. "Are you coming in now. We're having dinner a little
earlier."

She turned and moved slowly up the walk, while he followed, caressing
the head of Moses, his spotted hound. From the kitchen he could hear
Sarah Revercomb scolding the small negro, Mary Jo, whom she was training
to wait on the table. On one side of the hearth grandmother sat very
alert, waiting for her bowl of soup, into which Mary Jo was crumbling
soft bread, while across from her grandfather chuckled to himself over a
recollection which he did not divulge.

At Abel's entrance, the old man stopped chuckling and inquired in an
interested tone,

"Did you buy that ar steer, Abel?"

"Not yet, I'm to think it over and let Jim Bumpass know."

"Thar never was sech a man for steers," remarked grandmother,
contemptuously. "Here he's still axin' about steers when he can't hist
himself out of his cheer. If I were you, Abel, I'd tell him he'd better
be steddyin' about everlastin' damnation instead of steers. Steers ain't
goin' to haul him out of hell fire if he once gits down into it."

"Well, you can tell her, Abel," retorted grandfather, "that it's time
enough to holler 'hell-fire!' when you begin to burn."

Mary Jo prevented a rejoinder by appearing with a napkin, which she tied
under his wife's chin, and a little later the old woman could be heard
drinking greedily her bowl of soup. She lived for food, yet, like most
passions which have become exaggerated by concentration out of all
proportion to the fact upon which they depend, the moment of fulfilment
seemed always brief and unsatisfactory after the intensity of
an