University of Virginia Library

17. CHAPTER XVII.
MISS P. GOKE GETS HERSELF REPRESENTED.

THERE were lively times in Bloomington; the
show had been in successful operation for four
days, bringing some accession of business or
pleasure to everybody, and now the afternoon of
the fifth day was come, and this evening was to
see the last of the great show. Miss P. Goke had disposed
of all her superfluous stock, so many ribbons, and feathers,
and flowers, had been in demand by the young ladies; and
all her premises were pervaded by a strong smell of brimstone
caused by the process of bleaching old straw and Leghorn
bonnets that was going on in her underground department.
Miss Martha Whiteflock had been her most liberal
patroness, perhaps; she had purchased two new bonnets, at
once; an unheard-of extravagance, and causing not a little
gossip among the ladies whose old straws and Leghorns
were in the sulphrous state of renovation.

`And you say, Miss Goke,” says the butcher's wife,
“that one of 'em was quite a bride's bonnet?”

“Quite a bride's bonnet, indeed!” responds Miss Goke;
“it was a bride's bonnet out and out, veil and all!”

“What can she want of it?” says the butcher's wife;
“not to wear to the show, surely, and that just over, too?”

“But then there is the other, as plain as a pipe stem. I
should like to know what she wants of that!” says Miss
P. Goke.

“And by all accounts bonnets ain't the only extravagance
she's been guilty of,” says the butcher's wife. “She's been
buying dresses and things at all the stores in town, and
what's more, she's run her father in debt at a dreadful rate,
they say.”

“Is it possible?” says Miss Goke; and then she says,
“Poor Peter Whiteflock! Sometimes I am a'most sorry for
him; pity he's so big and strange looking, isn't it?”

“Why, yes, it does seem a'most a pity,” says the butcher's
wife; and bless my stars, but there he goes now in his new
carriage! Just look at him, Miss Goke, how he is fixed up!”

Then the two women got their heads together behind the
lace curtain, and discussed Peter's costume, from neck-tie to
shoe-tie, wondering how it came about that he was dressed
so carefully, and whether Mrs. Whiteflock had anything to
do about it, concluding very wisely that it was just one of
Peter's freaks, and that Madam Whiteflock had nothing whatever
to do about it.

Then the new carriage was discussed, and disparaged by
both the women. “It's too big for one horse, and isn't big
enough for two,” says Miss Goke.

“It's too high and narrer, and I don't like the color of it,”
says the butcher's wife.

“It's too low and too wide, I think,” says Miss P. Goke;
“and the dear knows Madam Whiteflock is welcome to it for
all of me; I don;t envy her her fine carriage nor her fine
husband, neither!” And she jerked the needle through the
ribbon she was knotting with great energy.

“Nor I, neither,” says the butcher's wife; “and I'd just
as soon ride in my husband's cart any day, as in that queer-looking
thing! And then she cries, “He's stopping at the
grocer's don't you think! What can he be going there for?
Just see him, Miss Goke — gloves, as you live! and a white

hankerchief stuck in his pocket! What under the sun is
going to happen?”

When Peter has fastened the rein at the hitching-post, he
gently caresses the neck and ears of the mare he is driving,
and as he stands thus, his face full toward the women, they
cannot help admitting that he is pale, and that, to all appearance,
he is sick, but at the same time, the new carriage and
all the fine things at home rise up against him, and they cannot
admit that he is sick in verity, or if he is, they say by
their manner, they have not much sympathy for him. Rich
people cannot suffer much in their estimation, or if they do,
why they get as good as they deserve, at any rate.

They talk of the show, of the handsome showmen, of all
the strange beasts and birds, of the delightful monkeys, of
the wonderful brass band that accompanies the show, and
of how dull and lonesome it will be when the great tent is
broken up, and the monster elephant led away under his
canvas cover.

“But, dear me!” cries Miss Goke, throwing down her
ribbons all at once, there is the twelve o'clock bell, and I
haven't got my tea-kettle on, and Mr. Hoops will be in for
his dinner in a few minutes!”

“Well, of all things, how time does fly when a body's interested,”
says the butcher's wife; “I ought to have been
at home by rights an hour ago; he's always cross if he
comes in and doesn't find me there!” And then she tells
Miss Goke never to marry if she knows when she is well off,
adding quickly, lest she may have said too much, “That is,
Miss Goke, not unless you get just such another good man
as I have got!” And with a playful smile that was meant
to gild all her married life with its sunshine, she went away.

Miss Goke's white fancy apron had been superseded by
one of coarse checked stuff, her dress cap was hung on the
knob of the door, instead of the knob of her neck, and she
was down on her knees, blowing at some black embers under
a pot of potatoes, when there fell a little shuffling at the
door, and Mr. Hoops, with his apron of bed-ticking full of
cooper's shavings, came in. He had never felt upon so much
of an equality with his hostess in his life; the little lace cap
with its gay flowers, and the little fancy apron with its tiny
pockets and floating sash had seemed to put leagues between
them, hitherto, but Miss Goke proper was by no means so

formidable, and down came the cooper to his knees beside her
before she had time to rise, if, indeed, she had not been too
much stupefied to rise at all. Stupefied with fright at being
thus discovered, for she was one of those women who contrive
to seem always at leisure, and to make it appear that
any real work is something to which they now and then betake
themselves for recreation and pastime.

“O dear! O dear!” she cries in her confusion, her face
blazing twice as red as her fire.

“Don't be wexed with yourself,” says the cooper, coaxingly;
“you never looked half so purty to me as what you
do this minute;” and then abashed at himself he began to
talk of the shavings he had brought, and of how soon they
would fetch up the fire.

He had never said so much before, and Miss Goke took
heart, in spite of her diminished attractions. “I was confused,
Mr. Hoops,” she said, “at being caught so, but if I
only look well in your eyes, why it's all right.” She spoke
with a certain playfulness that permitted her words to pass
for earnest or for jest, just as her listener chose to interpret.
Mr. Hoops would have chosen to interpret them in earnest,
but dare not. “I have wanity enough,” says he, “but I
haven't quite the wanity to believe you.” And then he gets
some more shavings under the pot, and blows upon them
with all his might.

“I was perfectly in earnest,” says Miss Goke, and this
time she was in earnest. By this time there was a little blue
blaze under the potato pot, and both continued for a minute
feeding it in silence from the red oak shavings in the cooper's
apron.

“What a nice fire you have made for me!” says Miss
Goke, at last driven to say something.

“Shavings does make a nice fire for some things,”
says the cooper; “a wery nice fire for some things.”

“For boiling vegetables, for instance,” says Miss Goke.

“Yes, that's what I had into my mind; for bilin' wegetables,
shavin's is splendid for that.”

“Ah, to be sure, splendid, really.”

“And you bile a good many, agreeable to my obserwation,
Miss Goke?”

“Yes, I am fond of vegetables, especially of potatoes, when
they are good and mealy.”

“So am I fond of wegetables, 'specially of potatoes, when
they're good and mealy, as you wisely say, Miss Goke.”

“And your shavings are just the thing; only see how the
lid dances on the pot!”

“Miss Goke,” says the cooper, with great seriousness,
“I'll wenter to say the heart in my bosom is dancin' wilder
than what that pot-led is.”

“Indeed, Mr Hoops! Why so, if I may venture to
inquire?”

“Wenter to inquire! I should say you might wenter to
inquire, for it was a matter that inwolves the happiness o'
your whole life, maybe, that I was rewolvin' into my mind.”

“Is it possible, Mr. Hoops? What could it have been?
About the potatoes?”

“Yes, Miss Goke, it was about the potatoes! how you do
see into things!”

“I think, sir, we have said enough on that subject,” says
Miss Goke, disappointed, and making a movement to rise.

The cooper caught her hand and detained her. “Yes,
dear one,” says he, “I was thinkin' about potaters, and rewolvin'
the subject into my mind. The pint I made was
this: We both like wegetables, and we agree that oak shavin's
is nice fuel to bile 'em with, especially potaters; now the
pint I make is this: Bein' agreed in our likin' for potaters,
and furthermore bein' agreed as to the best method of bilin'
the same, isn't it reasonable to suppose that we was intended
to be jined by the bindin' wow! You've got wirtues, Miss
Goke, and you've got a trade, but your wirtues would become
wisibler a thousand times, if they was reflected through
the bindin' wow, and your trade would be elewated into a
wocation by the same instermentality, for it can't be controwerted
but what the bindin' wow, in pint of respectability,
is an adwantage.”

He paused, and made a little dab at the ear of Miss Goke,
with a long, curled shaving — probably by way of soliciting
her reply. But she remained silent, and he went on: “Aside
from the adwantages of the wow, we two seem clear, into
my mind, to have been diwinely sot apart to come together,
the same being wirtually proclaimed through our agreement
about wegetables — more especially potaters.”

Here he made another pause, and another dab with the
shaving upon the innocent ear of Miss P. Goke. She caught

the shaving in her hand, and fell to knotting it as though it
had been a ribbon, but said nothing, and again the wooer
proceeded: “My obserwation werifies the assertion, and I
have the confidence into me, therefore, to assert that no
married couple into the whole uniwerse agree onto more
pints than we agree onto — the same bein' two — first, that
mealy potaters is good, and second, that shavin's is the thing
to bile 'em with. And now Miss Goke, in view of the adwantages,
and in view of the pints of agreement, do you
wote for the bindin' wow, or do you wote agin' the bindin'
wow?”

Perhaps it was in some sort a bashful art, that Miss Goke
still silently knotted the shaving, and gazed at the flames
now curling round and round the black and bulging pot as
it hung from the crane by a variety of hooks and trammels.

But whether it were a bashful art, or whether it were
maidenly confusion — for the proposal was somewhat
abrupt, it must be admitted — that kept the lady silent, the
silence was not interpreted to her advantage.

“I see what prewents your reply,” says the cooper; “I
have so inwolved my pints that you, bein' a woman, don't
comprehend 'em; I was wery thoughtless.”

And then he said, with gracious condescension, “What I
meant by bindin' wow was marriage, and when I asked for
your wote it was the same as askin' you to say yes or no,
and here I may explain that askin' for a woman's wote at all
onto such a question is just a compliment without the shadder
of meanin' into it, for it's always knowed aforehand
that the answer will be yes.” Then he told her that if she
felt too much awe-struck by the proposal to speak just then,
her answer would be took for granted!

“O the insufferable vanity!” cries Miss Goke, but she
cries it only mentally; what she suffers her wooer to hear is
another thing. She is not very wise, but she is wise enough
to know her superiority to him — wise enough to know that
thirty-two and eighteen are not all one, and that probably
wooers will not be so plenty hereafter as blackberries. She
knows, too, that the cooper has not overestimated the accession
of popularity and respectability that would accrue to
her through marriage. She sees in her mind's eye, Mrs. P.
G. Hoops shining down from her sign-board in the street,
and realizes the whole effect in a moment, and she answers,

seeming to look up to him, while in reality she looks down
upon him, that she feels flattered, honored indeed, by his
proposal, but that it is so sudden, so unexpected, she must
beg for time to consider. Then, too, she is so unworthy of
his preference! and she intimates that if she had had all the
wide world from which to choose a husband she must inevitably
have selected the simpleton before her.

As they ate their dinner he told her about the well-bucket
he had been making for Mrs. Fairfax. “It has been a wery
troublesome job,” says he, “and I never would have undertook
it of my own free will; it's out of my line o' business,
and has cost more than it'll come to; and if you say so we'll
just keep the bucket for ourselves, and I'll set one o' my
hands to make another for the widow — one that shan't cost
more than it comes to.”

Miss Goke had a secret feeling that this would not be
dealing quite honorably toward Mrs. Fairfax, and she gently
intimated her impression, saying that her own well-bucket
would answer very well for the present. Then she corrected
herself and said our bucket, smiling deferentially all the time.

“No matter whether we need the bucket or not,” says the
cooper with an air of great superiority; “we've got the
adwantage of her, and we'll keep it.” And he waved his
hand across the potato dish as if he would say, the subject
is dismissed, and the matter settled, now and forever. “You
women,” says he, “have wery strange notions o' business!”

“Very true,” says Miss Goke, still smiling deferentially,
and she said nothing more, except to inquire what was the
price of the new well-bucket.

“I promised it for three dollars and a half,” says the
cooper, “but what does that awail; she'll never get it.
I've got the adwantage.”

Still Miss Goke smiled, and if the cooper could have seen
it, there was a little tinge of sarcasm in her smile. All the
sermons and all the lectures she had ever heard had gone to
show that the weaker sex were represented by the stronger;
the wives and sisters by the husbands and brothers. Is
this a sample of the representation? she was saying to herself,
but she said nothing aloud; she only lifted her eyebrows
as she smiled.

“The bargain was all werbal, and it gives us the adwantage,”
says the cooper. They had risen from the table now,

and as he said this he took Miss Goke round the waist, and
drew her toward him, chuckling.

She felt degraded by that embrace, nevertheless she permitted
it — suffered it, we might say, and when she found
herself alone she almost regretted that she was no longer
free to say of her potato-pot mine, and not ours. For comfort,
she must put herself outside herself; this she did, and
and still found that Mrs. P. G. Hoops looked so much better
on the sign! It was settled for her then by the pressure
and force of external things that she should henceforth have
a protector and representative in the world!

In her show-case there hung a beautiful new bonnet just
completed for Mrs. Fairfax, and pinned to one of the broad
ribbon strings was a neat little note — the cost of the bonnet
in detail, and the price in full. She unpinned this note
and laid it on the coals that had boiled the potatoes; then
she sat down and made up a new bill, and if one could have
looked over her shoulder it would have been seen that in the
last account a deduction was made to just the amount of
three dollars and fifty cents, so she squared the matter with
her conscience and so she entered upon her representation.

That morning at breakfast Mrs. Whiteflock had said to
her husband — “Dear Peter we have been following the
Doctor's advice long enough; you have kept in your darkened
room and swallowed pills, and been blistered and bled,
and what not; now suppose we change our method, and you
go abroad and see your friends and take the air; there is the
show, shouldn't you like to go and see that, and take me,
Peter?”

She spoke with cheerful animation, laying the daintiest
bits of toast and broiled chicken on his plate, the while.

“No, good woman,” says Peter, smiling faintly; he never
called her wife, nor Martha, even, now-a-days; “No, I don't
feel like goin' much. I like to be alone mostly — that is,
what's called alone, but I ain't alone, no time. I have them
with me that's company enough.”

“But just to please me, Peter,” pleads the wife. “You
are not getting well so fast as I should like to have you,
though the doctor keeps saying you are.”

“Does he?” says Peter: “well you just take him at his
word, and don't inquire no furder. I'm satisfied.”

“But I am not satisfied. Why, Peter, your forehead

looks like yellow glass, and as though I could see my face
in it, if I tried, and the veins in your hands and along your
neck stand up like cords, and you are really no stronger
than I am, big as you are; it's no use for the doctor to tell
me you're better!”

“Do I really look so bad?” says Peter, and leaving the
table, he went into the drawing-room and surveyed himself
in the huge mirror that covered half the side of the wall
there. He turned his head this way and that, and felt of
the great veins along his temples and neck; then he pushed
back his sleeve and looked at his arm, lean, and limber, and
blue now, and as though it had been bruised and the life
were slowly withering out of it. He nodded to himself in
the glass and smiled as though he would say, it is all going
very well, better even than I had hoped.

“Isn't it just as I told you?” says Mrs. Whiteflock, who
had followed him. “O my dear Peter, you don't know how
anxious I am about you.”

“Anxious about me?” says Peter, his eyes staring wide
with amazement.

“Why, yes, Peter, and why shouldn't I be when you are
so sick?”

“Why shouldn't you be! Why should you be? I say,
that's the question.”

“How can you say so, Peter?”

“I could always say things which was true, and I never
could say things which wasn't true,” says Peter, and then
he says he is sorry if he has said anything which is not right,
but that he could not think at first it was possible she was
in airnest in the concern about him which she expressed it.
And then seeing how really distressed the poor woman
looked, he went on — “Don't be troubled about me. I ain't
worth it, but I seem to have been fated to be in your light,
though it can't be long now, so cheer up and I'll try to slip
off as quietly, and with makin' as little trouble as I can.”

“Then you'll really go?” says the wife not in the least
understanding his allusion about slipping off quietly, but
supposing he only refers to her suggestion as to his going
abroad.

Peter saw her mistake, but only smiled at it, and she went
on, all enthusiasm, “I'll order the new carriage fetched to
the door and you shall drive! The Doctor said nothing

against your driving, you remember, he simply opposed
your long walks. And there's your new clothes — you'll
wear them to be sure!”

“I'll wear 'em if you wish,” says Peter, “but I'd rather
keep 'em agin a time which I've got in my mind.”

“O you foolish man!” cries Mrs. Whiteflock, affecting
a playfulness she does not feel, and she goes close to him,
and with her hand across his neck talks of the time when he
shall be quite well again, and of the execution of a thousand
plans of happiness she has been dreaming of. Peter listened
and smiled assent, but it was plain to be seen that he heard
as from a great distance, and that he was not affected by
what he heard — listened as the wiser mother listens to the
prattle of her child when it talks of having its playthings
about it twenty years hence. He opposed her no more,
however.

“I will do as you wish, my good woman,” he said, “I
have done you wrong enough in time past, and now I must
make what amends I can.”

“Done me wrong, Peter! I should like to know when!”

Then she ran away, and when she came to him again her
cheek was aglow with wifely pleasure and pride. “Just
see,” she says, “what I have been doing;” and she held
up before him the waistcoat she had embroidered, and the
fine linen she had stitched with her own hand.

“If this had only happened before!” says Peter, and a
shadow passed across his face, and a tremor came to his lip,
just for an instant, and then it was gone and he smiled again.
“Put 'em away, good woman,” says he; “put 'em away in
the drawer. I'd rather keep 'em agin the time which I have
in my mind!”

“But you'll go abroad, any how?” says the wife, still
ignoring the sad intimation. “You'll drive about the village,
and so come round and call upon Miss Kate Lightwait; and,
by the way, her old beau has come back to her, and there is
no knowing that you will ever have another opportunity of
calling upon Miss Lightwait.”

“I'll go,” says Peter, “as it seems to be the wish that
you wish it, and I'll wear my new clothes, though I prefer
to keep 'em agin the time that I have in my mind, but there
is one thing that I am not willing for to do, the same being
to ride in the new carriage; I shouldn't feel right in it,

and besides I don't regard it as belonging to me. I bought
it for you to foller me in when I go to my last home, — and
I might say to my home, leaving out the last, — and then for
him and you afterwardst.”

“O dear Peter, it is too true that you have never had a
home, and I am all to blame for it. I own it in shame and
humiliation! and the Lord have mercy on me!”

“Don't blame yourself, good woman,” says Peter; “remember
it was the circumstances in which you was placed,
that made all that wasn't right, and when you come clean
down to the sin original, it all rests onto me. I married you
when I knowed you didn't love me, and I knowed in my
heart that such a marriage could only be a marriage to some
extent, and never a marriage in full, try as I would to deceive
myself. Once I asked Sam about it, but there was no need
o' asking Sam, the Sam in my own bosom had told me beforehand.”

The wife was sitting at his feet now and clasping his knees.
“If I didn't love you when I married you,” she says, “I
love you now: all your years of silent endurance, all the
good you have given back for my evil, all your meekness
under reproach, all your patience, and pious forbearance
more especially with reference to” —

She stopped, and hid her face upon his knees, but in a
moment lifting her eyes to him, went on: “No, I will spare
myself nothing; I will speak his name, hateful as it is. I
was going to say more especially with reference to Luther
Larky, and to all my foolish fondness for him. O how blind,
how wicked I have been!”

“Don't say that,” says Peter, “It hurts me to hear it,
and I've got nothing laid up agin you and never had. The
fault was mine, first and last. I have tried to do what I
could by keeping out o' your way, and being as though I
wasn't in the world; I couldn't go out of it voluntarily because
it's agin the Scripter, but things being as things was,
my continuance in the body was undesirable, and I've prayed
all the while for an abiding place that was more to my mind,
and I may say more to the mind of you and Luther, and at
last the prayer has been answered. And when I am gone,
I shall have done the best I could toward making amends
for the great wrong done you.”

“What wrong, pray?”

“The wrong of marrying you. That was a wrong which
there is no wrong like it; even our children haven't risen
up to call us blessed, but the wrong done to them was more
than they can do to us, for as things was original it wasn't
in the nature of 'em that they could be better than they are.
I don't blame them, nor you, nor him. I only blame myself,
but I give myself up long ago, and sentence was pronounced,
and I've got nothing to say in my defence.”

Peter had not intended it, but every word he had spoken
cut the poor wife to the heart; the darkness that was settling
between them served as a background upon which all
her sins, both of omission and commission, painted themselves
in hideous shapes and colors.

She was leaning across his knees, clasping his hands to
her bosom, and as she thus clasped and caressed them, the
burning, blistering tears fell upon them thick and fast. At
last she spoke, “O my good husband,” she says, “I have
been to you no true wife, and in shame and penitence I lie
here before you and ask your forgiveness.”

“My good woman, I have nothing to forgive,” interposed
Peter; “I sowed to the wind and I reaped the whirlwind,
that is all.”

“O, for mercy's sake,” she cries, “call me Martha — call
me wife. I cannot bear to be put so far away from you,
though I know I deserve it.”

“Then I'll call you Martha,” says Peter, “that other
word seems like trying to speak a language that was foreign
to me, and it's too late to learn a language that is strange.”

“O if there were but some great sacrifice, some sudden and
mighty throe by which I could make everything right,” responds
the wife, “what would I not do! But when we
have lived into a wrong, there is only one way, and that is
to live out and up into the right. This, with God's help, I
mean to do. O, my dear husband, do not leave me now,
just as I begin to be worthy of you, just as I begin to
understand how you have practised religion, while I have
only professed it.”

Then she goes on to say how he has done nothing but
good to her through all the years that she has been despitefully
using and abusing him; how he gave her a beautiful
home, and then contented himself with the least and meanest
portion; how he spread for her the feast, and himself fed
upon the crumbs that fell from her table.

“I have not meant to be wicked,” she says, “but it is all
one. I have been thoughtless, vain, selfish, frivolous and
foolish. In my carelessness and ingratitude I have taken
my blessings as matters of course, and the result is, moth
and rust have crept over my treasures, and I am left among
them desolate, my heart empty, and my soul a prey to remorse.
The viper I nursed in my bosom has stung me, and
though I have at last shaken it off and set my foot upon its
head, the poison is in all my veins, and in my sufferings I
have neither the true love nor the true pity of any living
soul.”

“O, Martha,” says Peter, “if this had only happened
afore!” And then seeing how sadly stricken she was, he
bent over her and as he smoothed the hair that was all
fallen and disordered, assumed the tone of cheerfulness and
hope. “Maybe, after all,” says he, “the event that I have
had in my mind may not be so near as I thought. Cheer
up, Martha, darling, for when you ain't a-smiling, it appears
like as if the sun was put out.”

She lifted her face from his knee all suffused with tearful
blushes; he had called her darling, he had laid his hand
lovingly upon her hair, and their courtship was really begun.

The reader may smile if he choose, but if there be anything
to cause a smile in the woman's recognition of the
honest simplicity and sweetness of the man's soul, albeit it
was so clumsily housed, and albeit his hand, and his heart,
and his tongue had played him false so long in their failure
to represent his better self; if he see aught to smile at in
all this, I say, let him smile; I fail to perceive in it any
matter for mirthfulness.

An hour after this, Peter, dressed in all his best rode
away in the new carriage. True, the embroidered waistcoat
had been found a world too wide, but Martha had tied
it is and in, until at last a beautiful fit had been achieved,
so she said. She had combed his hair, growing thin and
gray now, twisting the faded slips to half curls along the
hollow temples. She had buttoned the gloves, and then,
remembering his love of finery, she had lifted herself on
tiptoe and stuck her own diamond pin in the neatly folded
cravat, and as she watched him ride away from the porchside,
her heart was all astir with tender pride.

Old Posey had been groomed to her sleekest, and with a

green spray at her bridle, tossed up her head and trotted
off almost gayly, though if one had observed closely it would
have been seen that her legs were a little stiff, that one eye
was white, and that her neck was considerably awry.

None of these defects showed to the casual observer,
however, nor did the glossy, yellow forehead of Peter look
so wan and so ghostly beneath the broad brim of the fine
beaver, as it would otherwise have done.

Probably, if Miss P. Goke and her friend, the butcher's
wife, could have seen through the shows of things to the
facts, as they peered out upon him from the window that
day, the envious comment would never have been spoken,
and the feeling that prompted it would have been changed
to pity and love. Peter, as before said, drew up at the
grocery store, though, if he had known it, there was no real
errand to take him there, the wife in her wifely pride having
in truth simply made pretence of one, so that all the villagers
might see her husband in such style as became him — see
him to the astonishment of their eyes. The grocery store
being centrally situated, what should hinder them but see!

“Whew!” whistled the grocer, coming forward with
both hands uplifted, “What's to pay, Peter; have you
been getting married, or anything?”

“You speak wisdom unbeknown,” says Peter, “that's
just what I have been doing.”

The grocer whistled again, and then he says, “Who did
you marry, pray?”

“My wife,” says Peter, without a smile, and then seating
himself on the edge of the counter, he inquires if the
grocer has any milk crocks; “them's what my good woman
sent me after,” says he.

Mr. Hoops came in at this juncture, lighted his cigar, and
having made some inquiries concerning the prices of bacon,
potatoes, sugar and tea, with reference to his proposed
housekeeping, came to the great news with which he was
all the time bursting, and which he had withheld from Miss
Goke chiefly because he had happened to become engaged
to her. He had observed, perhaps, that as a general rule,
married men told the news elsewhere than at home, and was
resolved to begin in the regular way, betimes. For, certain
it is, he cared not a straw nor a shaving for either the grocer
or Mr. Whiteflock, and it is equally certain that he did care,

in some sort, for Miss P. Goke, and why, therefore, there
should have arisen in his mind from the moment of his engagement
to her a kind of secret antagonism that led him
to suppress the very thing which he knew would give her
pleasure, I leave for the wisdom element to determine;
being a woman I would not presume to understand. He
talked of the show and the showmen, of all the birds and
beasts, discussing their various natures, habits, beauties,
uses and the like, quite as though he had the whole history
of the animal kingdom by heart.

He told how everybody was going to the show that night.
“There will doubtless be in attendance,” said he, “one o'
the wastest assemblies ever conwened under canwass!”

“And you will, of course, take Miss Goke to see the
performances?” says the grocer, who from his shop window
had observed the cooper's little attentions; he had, in fact,
observed the apron of shavings, and had not miscalculated
when he had taken for granted that they would kindle a
flame; but what he based his conclusion upon even more
than this, was the fact that he had twice seen him whip Miss
Goke's little poodle, smartly, holding said poodle by the
ear the while, as though it were not done surreptitiously, but
rather by authority. And another thing which had been a
strong supposition in favor, was that he had heard the cooper
scold Miss Goke's parrot, keying his voice upon an irritable
sharp; the scolding being drawn down upon the head of the
innocent parrot simply and solely in consequence of her saying,
“Poor Polly is sick, and wants Dr. Allprice.” In view
of all this the grocer had felt justified in saying to the
cooper, “You will take Miss Goke to the show?” And
afterward, aside to Mr. Whiteflock, “We shall see what we
shall see!”

“No,” says the cooper, with a lofty air, and, in fact as
though he were the keeper and guardian of some imbecile
quite incapable of deciding for itself. “No, sir, I shall not
take Miss Goke to the show; it isn't a fit place for ladies;
the wery wiolin is wanquishin' to wirtue.” And then he
says, “Such things'll do well enough for us men.” Adding
directly, “She's all a-tiptoe to go, Miss Goke is, for the
wanity of women leads 'em constant where women has no
business fur to be, and I fur one, don't mean fur to encourage
'em.”

“I've an idea,” says Peter, “that places that are unfit
for women to go to, always will be so while women are
kept away from them.”

No attention was paid to this foolish notion of Peter, and
by degrees the cooper came up to the cream of his news.

“Do ary one of you know Mr. Gayfeather?” says he,
“our late fellow-citizen.”

“Is he dead!” says the grocer in amazement.

“Dead, no! I should say he was wery much alive; he's
going to be married anyhow!”

“Married! you don't say? Why he's only been here a
few weeks, but maybe 'tain't any one about here that he's
took up with; it can't be true, I reckon.” Then the grocer
adds, “He smokes awful, they say. Well, what's one
man's meat is another's pison!”

Perhaps he was thinking how much the habit of Mr. Gayfeather
might increase his trade.

“Yes, sir-ee!” says the cooper, “it's true, weritably
true. I had it, sir, from his own mouth, sir!” And he
knocks the ashes from his cigar and looks around in triumph.

“Yes, sir, it's weritably true; and though I'm bound to
keep the secret, I may just say it's no new thing, though
Charley Gay is only a late citizen.”

Then he tells how wery rich Mr. Gayfeather is, and what
a splendid hand he plays at euchre, winning inwariable
without taking ondue adwantage; how liberal he is in the
matter of drinks; how much he can swaller without bein'
wictimized, and what a gay, good-humored fellow he is,
generally. He calls him “Charley” all the while; talks
of his money and his importance as though they directly
reflected credit upon himself, and in the end discloses everything
except Miss Lightwait's name.

“The lady you both know wery well,” says he, “she
don't live more'n three stone throw from my shop; Miss
Goke makes her bonnets, and she wears a welvet in winter,
but I'll wenter she has a white 'un afore long. She ain't
so wery young, neither, and she has a wart on the left cheek
that disfigers her some, accordin' to my taste, but Charley
knows what he's about I reckon, and counts on some adwantage;
and then the affair is of old standin'.”

Here he tells the story of the early courtship, of the
father's opposition, and of how the girl came to grief — a
story that everybody has heard in one shape or another.

“So-ho!” says the grocer, “that's the way the cat jumps,
is it?” And he went straight to his cigar-case, and looked
in it with smiling satisfaction. Whether Miss Lightwait
were going to do ill or well that was another matter.

The news of highest import being off his mind,
the cooper comes down to Samuel and his prospects.
“Some,” says he, “have called him a wagabond; I never
did. Some, again, have said he was a wile character; I
wasn't one o' them, nuther, and there was them that was
for havin' him hung, right off; but for my part I always
thought he was a waluable citizen, and I never raly believed
he meant to shoot the bishop's son no more'n what I
did!”

And then, he says, “By all accounts he's goin' to be
rich enough to buy and sell all Bloomington, if he has a
mind.” And, finally, he says that Charley has been in town
this two days, a-workin' in Sam's behalf, and that he will
wenter a winegar cag agin two pins, that both Sam and
Charley will be in the willage afore sundown!”

This is news, indeed; but why shouldn't he have told
Miss Goke!

There was a good deal of talk and speculation, surmising
and idle gossip, between the grocer and the cooper; to say
truth, it lasted for hours, both neglecting all legitimate work
for its sake; and when they had exhausted all fact and all
guess-work, dipping into scandal and rolling coarse epithets
like dainty morsels under their tongues; when, in fact, they
could think of nothing further to say, they exacted the
promise, each of the other, that no hint of all should be
communicated to any woman! “If their tongues get
a-going, they'll never stop!” says the grocer.

“Werily that's true, they'll never stop!” echoes the
cooper, and then they fell to gossiping again, and repeated
two or three times over what they had already said.

Peter had been for the last ten minutes in one of those
semi-trances, in which he always seemed to be about half
withdrawn from this world. At last he said, speaking in
soliloquy, “Samuel's coming out brilliant, just as I foreseen,
but I can't see one thing that I'd like to see. There's a
shadder comes before me as often as I try.”

“Peter, are you asleep, man?” says the grocer.

At that he comes out of his trance, slides from the counter

where he has been sitting all unconscious of the gossip,
apparently, and with a nod, goes out, and after a little
caressing of Posey, drives slowly away.

“A very remarkable man,” says the grocer, looking after
him.

“Wery remarkable,” responds the cooper; “I always
said that of him.” And then he says, “Did you mind how
feeble he stood onto his legs? We'll lose a waluable citizen,
sir, when we lose him.”

“Valuable, indeed!” says the grocer, “my Adely Maud,
owes her life to him.”

“Those clothes he had onto him wasn't made into this
willage,” says the cooper.

“No, nor the new carriage nuther,” says the grocer,
“and the two, betwixt 'em, must have cost nigh onto a cool
thousan'.” Then they both said again he was a remarkable
man.

On his setting out from home Peter had not designed to
obey his wife's injunction, and call upon Miss Lightwait;
he had never been at the parsonage since the coming of the
bishop's son, being as he said, impressed with the belief
that he should not feel at home there; but what he heard at
the grocery set him thinking, and somehow produced the
trance-like effect already mentioned.

He rode through the village without looking to the right
or left, without seeming to see or to think, but when he
came to the parsonage he drew rein and walked straight to
the main entrance as one, if not consciously welcome, at
least in no wise abashed.

He found Miss Lightwait alone, and was received by her
with a stately courtesy, that must have disconcerted him if
he had not believed himself impelled and sustained by some
power external to himself. It was she, indeed, that was
put to confusion, so strangely superior to himself did he
appear, and so well did he set before her the perils of her
position.

“If this stranger has been playing cards and drinking
with the cooper, and telling him all his secrets, he is not the
man you have taken him for,” he said. “I implore you by
all sacred memories, by all blessed hopes, to have nothing
further to do with him.”

“By what authority do you come here to instruct me in
my duties?” says Katherine, loftily.

A change came over the face of Peter at this, and he
seemed as one speaking in his sleep.

“By the authority of my earthly relation, and spiritual
guardianship — I am your father.”

“Nonsense,” says Katherine, “You are Peter Whiteflock,
and crazy at that!”

“You are wrong there, my Kate, as you are likely to be.”
I am using Peter to communicate with you, just as you
would use an interpreter if forced to speak in a strange
tongue.” Then he said, abruptly, “Ruth is with me.”

“If you are my father, why can't I see you?”

“Why can't you see the stars at noonday?”

“Tell me something, then, that will convince me you are
here, and tell who is Ruth?”

“I will tell you then that I do not like this Gayfeather
of yours any better than I did twenty years ago, he is not
to be trusted.”

“There is no need that a spirit should come back to say
that!” And Katherine laughed proudly.

“Ah my Kate, you are the same perverse child you
always were. Would you could see as I see, and you would
recede from the precipice upon which you stand.”

“All that a mortal man might easily say,” replies Katherine.
“If you see so much, tell me what is under this.”

And she placed her hand on a small silver salver under
which she had slipped a letter that she was engaged in
reading when Peter was announced.

“It is a letter, and in the letter is a torn piece of lace,”
said the voice, for it seemed not to be Peter that spoke, but
only Peter's tongue. “Give it into the hand of this man
and he will read it.”

Katherine hesitated, but Peter put forth his hand automatically,
and she pushed aside the salver and gave him the
letter. He placed it against his forehead, and after a
moment, read, without taking the letter from the envelope,
and with closed eyes.

“You are possessed of the Devil, that's what you are!”
cries Katherine, blushing and dashing the angry tears from
her eyes, and then seizing the letter, she hid it in her bosom
and clasping her hands upon it silently rocked herself to
and fro, as a mother might rock the baby she had snatched
from destruction.

“O, my Kate! my poor lost Kate! if you could only
know how you grieve your mother and me!”

The last words trembled on Peter's tongue, and he fell
sobbing. But Katherine was only moved to anger, and
would hear no more, and directly Peter came to himself.
“I wouldn't 'a' come of my own head,” says he, apologetically.
Then he said, “I see some one beside you, looking
sad, like, and now a woman comes, and they go away together.”
Here he so exactly described the father and
mother of Katherine that she turned pale, and taking the
letter from her bosom tore it quite in two.

As Peter rose to go, she said to him, “When I require
your advice, sir, I will send for you; till that time I beg
you will give yourself no concern on my account.”

“I shan't be likely to come again,” says Peter, “your
spirit friends seem to think you must take your own course,
and learn through suffering. No, no, I am sure I shall not
be sent here again.”

“Let us hope not,” said Katherine, rising and courtesying
with cold formality.

“The spirit of my father, indeed!” she cries, as soon as
she had recovered herself a little; “if my father had anything
to say to me, he would say it, and not send Peter
Whiteflock to speak for him! And then who was Ruth? I
never knew a person of that name.” And because of this
discrepance she ignored all the facts.