University of Virginia Library

21. CHAPTER XXI.
“FOR BETTER, FOR WORSE.”

ONE morning, late in the summer, Dr. Allprice,
leaving Mrs. Fairfax's front door swinging behind
him, came leisurely down the walk with a
hammer and some nails in one hand, and a small
tin plate, painted black, and lettered with gilt, in
the other. He stuck the sign against the gate-post by one
tack, and withdrawing to about the middle of the road, surveyed
it with pride and pleasure. He could easily read the
lettering at that distance, and he seemed to find a considerable
delight in doing so, for as he read, he pronounced aloud,
“Prosper Allprice, M. D.” This he did two or three times

over, smiling and nodding approval. While he stood, almost
leaning toward the gate-post thus embellished, as in reverence,
Mrs. Fairfax came over the steps, and shading her eyes with
one hand, made haste to join him.

Her hair was in curl-papers; her false teeth were out;
her slippers were down at the heel, and she wore an open
morning-gown that floated behind her as she walked, revealing
a white petticoat, embroidered and flounced to the last
degree, but not over tidy; and her face wore an expression
of weary impatience.

“What set you at this so early, Doctor?” she says, eyeing
the sign, as she trailed her flounces along the dusty road.

“What do you say, madam?” says the Doctor, drawing
himself up. “You mumble your words so without your
teeth, I can't understand you.”

“I asked you what you was putting your sign up there
for!” says Mrs. Fairfax, slightly changing the form of her
question.

“So as to have it seen, to be sure, my dear.”

“Anyhow, you've got it too high, I can tell you that!
but why don't you put it up beside the door; so much more
genteel.”

“As I told you, my dear, my object is to have it seen, and
here you will allow me to suggest to you that I prefer you
to attend to your own affairs, and leave mine to me!”

“Your affairs! as if your affairs were not mine!”

“Allow me to suggest again, if you have fallen into such
a womanish mistake as that, because your affairs are mine,
it by no means follows that mine are yours!”

“How hateful you can be when you try, but there is no
need of your trying, if you did but know it.”

Then the Doctor indicated by a motion of his hand that she
had better go into the house.

“No, I won't go in neither till I get ready! and I won't
have that nasty piece of tin stuck onto my gate-post, and
that's more!”

“Your gate-post!” and contempt could go no farther
than it did in the Doctor's brief exclamation.

Then she made a dash at the post and had nearly wrenched
the sign away, when the Doctor taking her quietly by the
shoulder, put her inside the gate.

“You ought to be ashamed of yourself, so you had,” she

began, putting her handkerchief to her eyes; “never was
poor, loving woman so abused. And after all I've done for
you, too! O my poor, poor heart!”

The Doctor hammered so loud as to drown her voice, never
so much as looking at her.

She knew, even though her eyes were hidden, that this
demonstration was all a failure; for somehow, women always
know what effect they are producing, or failing to produce,
blindfolded or not; and, suddenly changing her tone and
turning fiercely upon him, she told him she didn't care a
feather's weight for him, and never did!”

“No love lost, my dear!” says the Doctor, and he began
to whistle as he hammered. And so the injured woman
wiped her eyes and went into the house, and the Doctor's
sign was nailed to the post, past all chance of removal.

It will be perceived, I think, that they were married.

One day about this time Mr. Gayfeather paid another visit
to Samuel; he was in high spirits; fortune, he said, was
tired of opposing him and had relented at last; to be sure,
he had nothing in hand as yet, but it was all the same; he
saw his way clear, and the thing was just as sure as to-morrow's
sunrise, if he only had a thousand or so to begin with.
He was sick of belonging nowhere and to nobody. “In
fact, Sam, my boy, I am going to do the wisest act of my
life; I am going to marry and settle for good!”

“And is that the brilliant prospect, Uncle Charley?”
says Samuel, looking a good deal disappointed.

Well, no, but this would be the means of keeping him
steady. “To own the truth, Sam, I have been rather a reckless,
wild sort of devil in my day, and have run through two
or three fortunes. But I am going to reform now, upon my
honor, Sam; I have been brayed in a mortar and the foolishness
has departed from me.” Samuel began to feel more
interest now. “Uncle Charley” had said he had been brayed
in a mortar, and scriptural passages always had a great effect
upon his mind. The worldly man was quick to perceive
that he was on the right track. “Yes, Samuel,” says he,
“I am minded to put away childish things, and to be a man,
at last; and I look to you more than to anybody in the world,
to stay up my hands.” His countenance became solemn as
he said this, and casting down his eyes, he waited in silence.

“And if you are really in earnest,” says Samuel, “why
not at once come into the church?”

“That's just what I mean to do!” says Uncle Charley,
“and you know I have associated with godly people of late,
almost altogether, and to begin, I am going to marry one
like Tabitha of old; a woman full of good works and almsdeeds.”

“I don't know Miss Lightwait at all,” says Samuel. “I
only hope you may have made a wise choice.” And then
“Uncle Charley” switched off upon the tram-way of
business.

“Heavenly prospects have opened up to me, Sam,” he
says, and then perceiving his mistake, hastens to correct
himself by substituting brilliant for heavenly.

“I am so glad,” says Samuel; “things seem to have
gone against you somehow, in the past, but there is always
a chance for earnest, honest work; it's never too late for
that, Uncle Charley.”

And he asks what the brilliant prospect is. Then Mr.
Gayfeather names a certain mercantile agency of the city
of Cincinnati. “There on Pearl Street, you know,” he
says. “Well, I am to go into that as a sort of fancy worker,
you understand; the salary being greatly in excess of any
positive labor on my part. Oh it's going to be my salvation!
I mean, you know, Sam, in a worldly point.”

“But you mustn't lose sight of the more important pint,
Uncle Charley.”

“No danger; and I shall have a wife to keep me in leading
strings, you know. None o' your sour looks! A pious
wife, I mean!”

Then they got back to the agency. “I don't just understand
what you are to do,” says Samuel; “not to receive
more than you earn, surely?”

“O no, no! Why what a green boy you are! I am to
write the thing up, you see, and to travel about and bring
it into notice by giving our advertising to such newspapers
as will do the handsome thing by us in turn. I assure you,
Sam, I shall feel justified in receiving my salary, big as it
is, for I shall serve the house in ways that no money can
really pay for. It ain't every man that could fill the place,
not by a long shot.”

“The house is respectable, I take it?” says Samuel.

“Respectable?” I should think so; they're worth three
millions!”

“And you are satisfied that you will earn all you get?”

“Certainly! And between you and me I intend to raise
my figures as soon as I make myself indispensable.”

“Then you ought to tell them so in the beginning; maybe
they wouldn't employ you if they knowed that!”

Uncle Charley jumped to his feet at this, slapping Samuel
on the shoulder, and roaring with laughter. “O my sweet
child!” he cries, “your innocence is perfectly lovely!”

Samuel felt shamefaced. “I don't understand at all,”
says he; “I only hope everything is right.”

“Right? Why to be sure, or at any rate it will be, when
you shall have forked over a cool thousand! that's indispensable,
my boy.” And wiping tears from his eyes, for he had
laughed till he cried, he sat down with his hand upon Samuel's
knee.

“I'll tell you what I'll do,” says Samuel. “I'll buy fifty
acres of land here, and that's enough for any man to get a
good living from, and you shall settle down, and grow old
in the true patriarchal style. I don't know why, but somehow,
I should like that better.”

Then Mr. Gayfeather said every man must choose his own
walk in life; “for instance,” says he, “you would not like
me to dictate to you; you know what you can do better
than I can tell you.” And after a good deal of talk that
Samuel could not but admit to be sensible, he grew grave
all at once, and said, giving Samuel a little jostle, for he still
held him by the knee, “I have been taught that he that
asketh, receiveth; but I have asked bread, and you give me
a stone; I ask a fish, and you give me a serpent.” And
then he folded his arms together, and said: “Ah, well, well!
riches might make me selfish, too, I don't know; but, Samuel,
remember, I only want a crumb from your table; and
having that, I promise you, on my honor, that I'll never
trouble you in this way again.”

Of course he got the money, though Samuel could not
readily spare so much, only a small portion of his inheritance
being as yet available.

“Be careful of this, Uncle Charley,” he says, when he
put the check in his hand, “for remember two and two never
did and never will make ten.”

“I'll remember, my boy, and God bless you.” And so
they parted.

Some ten or twelve days after this, the Whiteflock children
brought Samuel, on coming home from the post-office, where
their mother sent them every day in the hope of hearing
news of her daughter Martha, a letter from Mr. Gayfeather,
in which he told his “dear boy” that he was married and
about the happiest man under the sun. He was not regularly
settled to business yet; there had been a little hitch
in the arrangements; but he had no doubt of coming out of
the rut and running as smooth as grease.

The letter ended with, “Come and see us when you are in
town, and we'll talk matters up over a glass of royal old Burgundy.
You'll find us at the — House, cosey as a couple
of kittens. Kate sends a great deal of love, and joins me in
the hope that you will honor us with a very early call.”
And so he was forever and a day Sammy's most grateful and
affectionate friend and uncle.

Samuel took this letter from his waistcoat pocket and
read and re-read it two or three times over in silence, as he
sat by Peter's bedside that evening. At last he asked Mrs.
Whiteflock, who sat with sewing work in her lap and her
eyes upon Peter, whether it didn't cost a good deal to live at
the blank hotel. “Why, it's the finest house in all the city
ain't it?” says he.

And when she told him it was an expensive house to live
in, and that only rich people could afford it, she thought, he
sighed, crumpled the letter in his hand and read it no more
that night.

One day Peter had a fancy for prunes; he had not tasted
food for two days; the prunes could not be had in all Bloomington.
“Peter shall not lack anything that I can procure
for him,” says Samuel, and off he went to town. When this,
and other errands he had in hand were accomplished, he
purchased a pair of white cotton gloves, and a cravat of a
much gayer pattern than he was used to wear, and renovating
his toilet as he rode along the street, came finally in
front of the — House, where he paused, and glancing up
and down at all the windows in the hope of seeing his Uncle
Charley at some one of them, he dismounted, secured the
bridle-rein and went in, asking the first person he happened
to meet if Mr. Gayfeather was anywhere about. The stranger
thus applied to did not know, and directed him civilly
enough to the clerk's desk. There Samuel repeated his inquiry

with such a dubious, backward air as made the clerk
pause and eye him sharply before he gave the required information.

His pockets were stuffed out with the prunes and other packages,
his hat was set awkwardly on the back of his head,
and his little attempt to refine upon his costume had had the
effect to produce an inharmony that was almost ludicrous.
Samuel Dale, as Samuel Dale, was well enough, but Samuel
Dale in white gloves and scarlet cravat was an anomaly.

“Mr. Gayfeather?” says the clerk, “Mr. Charles P. Gayfeather?
Do you wish to see him?”

“Yes, sir,” says Samuel; “he is my uncle.”

“Your uncle!” replies the clerk, and then in more
subdued and respectful terms he tells Samuel that he had
better send up his card in that case, so as to insure an interview.
Mr. and Mrs. Gayfeather are at breakfast, he thinks.

“At breakfast!” cries Samuel, surprised in turn. “Why,
sir, that can't be; it must be a'most 'leven o'clock!” and
he takes out a great silver watch and turns the face towards
the clerk.

The clerk nodded and smiled; “he is at breakfast, nevertheless,”
says he, and then he says, “You countrymen
think that rather slow, I dare say.”

“I think it is a prodigious waste of time; a wicked
waste,” says Samuel, and then he says he has no card, and
if anybody will show him the way, he will take the risk of
disturbing Mr. Gayfeather, for if he has not yet breakfasted
it is high time he had. “I've rid all the way from Bloomington
since I eat my breakfast, and have done a dozen
errands in town, into the bargain.”

“Show this young man to Mr. Gayfeather's room,” says
the clerk, nodding to a black boy who stood observing him,
and grinning as he observed; but the boy took to his heels
and clicked it out of sight before Samuel had time to turn
about. He, for his part declined to be usher. He had the
grace to inform Mr. Gayfeather, however, that a queer looking
fellow was below stairs who professed to know him.

“It's Sam Dale, I'll bet my life on it. I must go right
down and fetch him up.”

With the door-handle in his grasp, Mr. Gayfeather turned
back, and playfully uplifting one finger, added, “and mind,
you don't snub him, now, my dear; I have special reasons.”

In five minutes he came back, his arm through Samuel's,
and running on in the liveliest and most familiar way.

“Isn't this cosey, now? Say, Sam, don't you envy me!”
He had thrown open the door of the breakfast parlor and was
looking round him with all the wonder and admiration he
had expected to excite in Samuel.

“Cosey enough, if that was all!” says Samuel, backing
awkwardly against the wall, and without a grain of the enthusiasm
he was expected to manifest.

Mr. Gayfeather colored, and made haste to introduce his
new wife. “Kate, my dear,” he says, “this is my pet
nephew, give him the right hand of fellowship.”

“With all my heart,” says Mrs. Gayfeather, jumping up
from the table and shaking hands; “my hand and my cheek,
too, if he will do me the honor;” and she offered him her
cheek to kiss. Samuel just touched her forehead with his
lips, blushing twice as red as she, and backing quickly and
awkwardly away again. And Mr. Gayfeather completed his
discomfiture by the exclamation, “Well, Sammy, my boy,
what do you think of your aunt?”

She wore a gay little cap, perched like a butterfly on the
top of her head, her soft, white fingers sparkled with rings,
her brooch was quite a breast-plate, and her iron-gray curls,
short and crisp, had, to Samuel's thinking, a defiant sort of
look. Her gown, of some plain-colored stuff, had a stylishness
about it that would have put Mrs. Whiteflock's Sunday
best to shame, and her pretty slipper, when she set her foot
on the fender, caused Samuel to swallow very hard. He
had seen its like before.

Nothing would do but he must come to the table and have
a cup of coffee. “I shall not like it a bit, Samuel,” says
Mrs. Gayfeather, pronouncing his name as though she had
been used to it all her life, “if you don't sit down with us;
no, I shan't like it a bit; Charles ring for fresh cakes and
coffee. Now, Samuel, just here by me.”

Then she kept him so busy with her light, little gossip
about the young folks of the country, and her sympathetic
inquiries about the old and the ailing, more especially about
Peter, serving him with her own pretty hands, and giving
him double quantities of white sugar and cream, and of all
the other delicacies on the board, that he had no time either
to be displeased or confused any more, and in spite of his

prejudice against the fine gown and little butterfly cap, and
against the late breakfast, felt himself very comfortable.

He had protested with all his might against sitting down
with them. “I have eat one breakfast,” he had said over
and over.

“Then call it dinner,” Mrs. Gayfeather had answered.
“And really, Samuel, I suppose it is near your dinner time.
We ought to be ashamed of ourselves, but truly I am doing
my best to get Charles into better ways, and I think I am
producing some amendment, ain't I, Charles? And you,
Samuel, must help me with advice, and counsel; now, won't
you?”

Time and again he tried to bring something around about
the brilliant prospect ahead, but somehow that was kept out
of the conversation, and the general tone was meant to indicate,
and did indicate to Samuel that everything was going
as well as it could go.

Still he was not fully satisfied. All that purple and fine
linen, all the shining service of porcelain and silver must be
paid for, he knew, and how? That was the question.

At length he said bluntly and outright, “How about that
hitch, Uncle Charley?”

“What hitch?” says Katherine, turning sharply round;
“has Charles been telling you secrets that he keeps from
me? Now I shall protest against that in the beginning!”
She had modified both tone and manner into playfulness before
she concluded the sentence, but Samuel felt that there
was serious meaning in her words, even before he received
a rebuking wink from “Uncle Charley.”

“Never marry, Sam, my boy!” he cries across the table,
gayly; “only see what it has brought me to, already. Well,
we won't tell her one word about it, now, shall we, Sam?
let her think black ruin is impending, or what she will, just
to plague her! Only see what your curiosity brings upon
Kate, my darling, and beware!”

Of course she did not mind the denial, so long as he had
called her darling, and the current ran smooth again.

“By the way, Samuel,” says Katherine, “they say that
Mrs. Fairfax has found her match at last; how is it?”
and then she tells him she has been told that Dr. Allprice
has proven a veritable tyrant. “In short,” interposes Mr.
Gayfeather, “that Madam Fairfax has to mind her eye!”

Samuel knew nothing about it, he said; they were both
professors, and he hoped they would conduct themselves
with the seemliness that became Christian people.

“And what of little Margaret?” says Katherine; “you
and John Hamlyn were running a race for her, were'nt
you?”

“I am distanced,” says Samuel, without either smiling or
blushing, and directly he arose to go.

“What!” says Katherine, “I thought you were really
in love with the little beauty!”

“I thought so too,” replied Samuel, “but I walked in a
vain shadow and disquieted myself in vain; I dreamed, and
I am awake; that is all.”

“I hope then,” says Katherine, “since it is wishing you
no harm, that John Hamlyn will succeed; I am only afraid
that she is too good for him.”

Samuel looked at her in surprise. “I always understood,”
he says, “that you was against havin' her in your family;
but,” he adds, “how little we know by what we hear.”

He might have said, “how little we know by what we
see!” but he was too ingenuous for that.

“I opposed to the match?” says Katherine; “by no
means; I believe that nothing should stand between true
lovers!” and she glanced at her husband.

“She is only humbugging you, Sam,” says Mr. Gayfeather
when he had gotten Samuel to one side; “she thinks
since she has taken me for better, for worse, (and for worse
I'm afraid) that further opposition would come from her with
an ill grace; and that is the long and short of it.” And then
he says, “I tell you, Sam, the best woman in the world will
lie upon occasion!”

“Why, Uncle Charley! what do you mean? and this
about your own wife too!”

“Wife or maid, they are all alike; but come, have a
cigar, won't you, old fellow? Then a glass of wine or
brandy? though it is so early in the day; something, I
entreat!”

No, Samuel would have nothing more. “But what I
would like, Uncle Charley,” says he, “is to know how you
are really getting along, before I go away!”

“Fine as a fiddle, Sam! everything right now! That
little flurry is all over; I was foolish to mention it to you.

And, by the way, Sam, understand that whatever I have
said, or may say to you, is strictly confidential; you are
not to breathe a word of it to Kate, you see!”

“And why not? I thought a man and his wife was one
flesh!”

“Bosh!”

“What do you mean, Uncle Charley?”

“Why, God bless my soul, boy, I mean that you don't
know anything!”

As Samuel rode homeward that day, he pondered upon
these things, and they made him uneasy and anxious.

“Either the world is very wicked,” he mused, “or I don't
know anything, sure enough.”

The sun was yet three hours high when he dismounted at
Mrs. Whiteflock's gate, and the first thing he saw was the
face of Miss P. Goke at the window. She wore her white
fancy aprou, and was running shurs in a piece of green silk,
and she tapped on the sash with her open-topped steel thimble,
and smiled and nodded in a very pleasant way as he
passed along.

He found Peter better, as he had inferred from her smile;
sitting up in bed, and impatient for the prunes.

“Who knows but he may get well yet!” whispered Mrs.
Whiteflock, as she took the anxiously desired parcel in her
hand and hurried away to the kitchen.

Peter had his head shaved, and a blister all over the back
of it now, and propped among his white pillows, his forehead
looked yellower and glassier than ever.

A small bottle with some black liquid in it, and a long tin
box, with lid crimped around the edges, stood on the table
by his bedside, and with one wasted hand he played with them
idly as a child would have done, while he listened to the news
Samuel had brought from town. Now he would identify
himself with the future, as though he were the stoutest and
healthiest man in the world, and then again he would leave
himself altogether out of the order of things. The green silk
stuff lying in the white apron of Miss Goke made a pretty
picture in his eyes, and as she pulled her long threads up
and up, and puckered and puffed, and crooked and straightened,
he seemed to take as lively an interest in the work as
did she herself. She understood intuitively how to please
him, and puffed and puckered a good deal gratuitously, and

when the bonnet began to take shape she put it on her head
and appealed to him to know how it was going to look.

“And would you believe, Peter,” she says, as she thus
held the bit of silk about her face for his inspection and approval,
“that I made one almost just the match o' this;
only it was trimmed all round here,” tapping one finger
against the front, “with a frill of the sweetest light blond
you ever laid eyes on; and just here over the crown, it had
another frill of lace, and stuck right here was the loveliest
japonica! just like it was cut from your garden this minute!
And what do you think happened? Why, you never could
guess, and it ain't no use for you to try; and I'd taken
three dollars and fifty cents off the price of the bonnet, too
— but that ain't here nor there — just for reasons of my own,
you understand.

“Everybody said when they saw that bonnet, for it hung
in the window two or three days, I reckon: “O Miss Goke,
what a splendid thing! I must have one just like it!'
`Why,' says Miss Stake, says she, `I must have one o' them,
if it costs the price of a calf!' says she. But la sakes, I
knowed Stake wouldn't pay no sich a price, an' I told her
she could have one trimmed with imitation lace, and leave
off the japonica entirely. And says I, Miss Stake, says I,
nobody could tell the difference across the street! But no,
nothing would do her, but have one like that she would, and
it was just the same with a dozen others; they was all clean
crazy about it. Well, it was a splendid thing, anynow!
just think! the frill here! and the frill here! and the japonica
there! O gracious me, but it was a beauty.

“`Who is it for?' says one and all. Well, says I, it's
for Mrs. Fairfax that was, Mrs. Allprice that is! And then
says they, `I envy her,' says they. Well, that bonnet went
home a Tuesday; the Doctor took the bandbox in his buggy,
and what do you think happened? Well, now, guess! O
you never could guess, I reckon. Well, a Wednesday, just
as I was hanging the potato-pot on the crane for dinner, up
drives the Doctor in his buggy agin, and out he gits with
that bandbox in his hand.

“Lausy me,” Doctor, says I, “what's to pay?” I
thought may be the strings were a little too short, or that
there was a trifle too much border, or something like that,
but bless your heart, I didn't dream o' the truth.

“`What's to pay, Miss Goke?' says the Doctor, repeating
my words, `why, there is too much to pay, Miss Goke!'
And do you know I wouldn't 'a' been more took a-back if
he had fetched me a slap 'side o' the face.

“Pay!” says I, “why I didn't send the bill for that; I
wouldn't think o' such a thing, right away; not from Mrs.
Allprice!” says I.

“`And then,” says he, with a kind of sneer, `This thing
is to come off, and this thing is to come off, and this thing is
to come off!' And don't you think it was the frill and the
fall, and the Japonica! Why my heart ached when I put
the scissors in that bonnet, I can tell you.

“Why,” says I, “doesn't it please her?” as I took it
from his hand.

“`It doesn't please me!”' says he; and then he says,
snapping his fingers at the japonica, (and the loveliest thing
you ever saw), `such furbelows will do well enough for Margaret,
if she wants them, but for Mrs. Allprice! ridiculous!'

“Well, I thought Miss. Fairfax would cry her eyes out;
but what do you think? well, guess; O, you couldn't guess
in a whole month. Nex' day Miss Fairfax — laws what a
fool I am to say Miss Fairfax, but a body can't get used to
a new name in a minute — well, she comes into my shop,
and would you believe, she has the face to tell me that she
didn't like the lace and the flower; that they was too young
for her! And then top o' that, and that was a whopper,
she says, says she, `the Doctor wanted me to wear it as it
was; in fact I could hardly make him carry it back to you,
but finally, when I said I would not wear it, says he, to
please you, then, I suppose I must take it back. But it
was so against his wish! Then Miss Goke says, “I tell you
that woman has got her neck into a yoke that'll gall her
to the latest day of her life!' And then she says plaintively,
`when a man is courting you it's one thing, and
when he's married to you it's another!'

“But directly she tried to get up her spirits as she drew
up her long thread, and ran on again. `She told another
whopper too, Miss Allprice did!' says she. `It was
about Margaret. Don't you think,' she says, `the bishop's
son is a-going to marry that little chatterbox! I don't believe
a word of it; do you, Samuel?”'

“I hope it's true,” Samuel answered, and he manifested

no further interest or curiosity about it, just then; but when
Miss Goke went on, he listened with deep attention.

“Things don't look right, to me,” says she, with that
peculiar intonation that indicates so much more than words.
And then she says, “About the long and short of it is this;
the old woman wants to get her daughter off, and she thinks
it would be a mighty fine thing to have her marry a bishop's
son; and Margaret herself is a silly, young thing, proud of
Mr. Lightwait's attentions, no doubt, and a good deal carried
away one how and another; but mind you, the bishop's
son no more intends to make her his wife than he intends to
make me his wife. If a certain person had continued to be
his rival (here she looked hard at Samuel), I can't say what
he might have done; but as things stand, he'll never marry
her; mark my words!” And then she says, using the peculiar
tone again: “Some things look queer to me.”

“For instance,” says Samuel, hitching his chair close, and
leaning quite over her lap, in his eagerness. “Well, for
instance, if Margaret is at the parsonage almost every day
of her life, and sometimes till late into the night; what then?
doesn't it look queer? If Mr. Lightwait wants to marry
her, I say why doesn't he do it? And it's my opinion
no good will come out of it. Mrs. Allprice she pretends to
me that it's all a beautiful arrangement; that Margaret,
being engaged, just runs in to oversee things a little, since
the sister is gone, and that she never stayed in the evening
but once, and that was when it happened to come on rain;
but I know better than that! Hoops has seen them walking
in the garden two or three times after ten o'clock at
night, and whether they was on their way home then, nobody
knows!”

“Mr. Hoops might have been mistaken,” says Samuel.
“Mrs. Fairfax has common sense and so has Margaret, and
the bishop's son, too, for that matter.”

“Mr. Hoops doesn't lie!” says Miss Goke, drawing herself
up, and puckering her mouth as well as her silk. And
then she says, her eyes flashing, “Maybe you'll believe the
evidence of your own senses, if you don't believe him; look
there!” and she pointed to the open road along which Margaret
was passing.

“Look how she is peeping this way from under her
parasol!” And then Miss Goke says, “Between you and

me, Mr. Dale, it's just to make somebody jealous that she
goes so much to the parsonage! There! she's looking back
over her shoulder now; just see her! It ain't half so much
to see the bishop's son as it is to make somebody jealous that
she's doing all this.”

And then she says that Mr. Lightwait did go and ask Margaret's
mother, as she knows, if she would allow her little
daughter to come now and then and arrange his study, saying
it would be quite a charity, for that since Kate was gone,
there was no one with whom he could trust his books and
papers.

“Well, that's all right enough, I s'pose,” says Miss Goke,
“or rather, it would be if she went and went away again,
at proper times and seasons, and I don't say nothing against
any of it, but I put this and that together, and I say it looks
queer, and that I will say, for queer it does look; and if he
wants to marry her, why don't he marry her? It ain't Miss
Allprice that's in the way, anyhow. I don't say nothing
against the bishop's son, maybe he is as good as the general
run o' men, but the best o, men are fallable!”

At this juncture she arose and took her station at a window
overlooking the parsonage, and there stood stitching
away till Margaret turned in at the gate. “There she goes!
I told you so!” she cried. And then she says, “And don't
you believe there is the bishop's son coming out to meet
her; that shows he was watching for her. Well, I don't
know what the world is coming to!”

Samuel took the big Bible directly, and with the great
volume on one knee, and little Peter on the other, remained
reading apart, till after sunset.

Indeed a remarkable change had come over him since his
breech with Margaret, and the time that used to be passed
in dreaming was filled up with profitable reading and study.
Such school books as the child's first History, and simple lessons
in geography and grammar, he kept all the time about
him, and when he got tired with working in the field he
would take up one or the other of them, and while he rested
in the shade of some hay-stack or hedge-row for half an hour,
commit a page or two to memory.

“I have come at the eleventh hour into the vineyard,”
said he, “and there is no time for idling and no time for grief.
I must work, work with all my might for the rest of the day.”