"Yes! Mr. Byers is a good provider--and handy. And you? I should say
you'd want a wife in this business?"

Mr. Langworthy's serious half-perfunctory manner here took on an
appearance of interest. "Yes--I've bin thinkin' that way. Thar's a young
woman helpin' in the kitchen ez might do, though I'm not certain, and
I ain't lettin' on anything as yet. You might take a look at her,
Rosalie,--I orter say Mrs. Byers ez is,--and kinder size her up, and
gimme the result. It's still wantin' seven minutes o' schedule time
afore the stage goes, and--if you ain't wantin' more food"--delicately,
as became a landlord--"and ain't got anythin' else to do, it might pass
the time."

Strange as it may seem, Mrs. Byers here displayed an equal animation in
her fresh face as she rose promptly to her feet and began to rearrange
her dust cloak around her buxom figure. "I don't mind, Abner," she
said, "and I don't think that Mr. Byers would mind either;" then seeing
Langworthy hesitating at the latter unexpected suggestion, she added
confidently, "and I wouldn't mind even if he did, for I'm sure if I
don't know the kind o' woman you'd be likely to need, I don't know who
would. Only last week I was sayin' like that to Mr. Byers"--

"To Mr. Byers?" said Abner, with some surprise.

"Yes--to him. I said, 'We've been married three years, Constantine, and
ef I don't know by this time what kind o' woman you need now--and might
need in future--why, thar ain't much use in matrimony.'"

"You was always wise, Rosalie," said Abner, with reminiscent
appreciation.

"I was always there, Abner," returned Mrs. Byers, with a complacent show
of dimples, which she, however, chastened into that resignation which
seemed characteristic of the pair. "Let's see your 'intended'--as might
be."

Thus supported, Mr. Langworthy led Mrs. Byers into the hall through a
crowd of loungers, into a smaller hall, and there opened the door of the
kitchen. It was a large room, whose windows were half darkened by the
encompassing pines which still pressed around the house on the scantily
cleared site. A number of men and women, among them a Chinaman and a
negro, were engaged in washing dishes and other culinary duties; and
beside the window stood a young blonde girl, who was wiping a tin pan
which she was also using to hide a burst of laughter evidently caused by
the abrupt entrance of her employer. A quantity of fluffy hair and part
of a white, bared arm were nevertheless vi