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This touched Mr. Rooper, whose heart was sensitive as it had never been before. “Come along, Asaph,” he said. “You shall have everything, meerschaum pipe included. If anybody but me is goin’ to smoke that pipe, I’d like it to be my brother-in-law.” Thus, with amber-tipped guile, Mr. Rooper hoped to win over his friend to not only not hinder, but to help him.

As the two men walked away, Asaph thought that he was not acting an unfraternal part toward Marietta, for it would not be necessary for him to say or do anything to induce her to refuse so unsuitable a suitor as Thomas Rooper.

About fifteen minutes before dinner–which had been cooked with bits of wood which Betsey had picked up here and there–was ready, Asaph walked into the front yard of his sister’s house attired in a complete suit of new clothes, thick and substantial in texture, pepper-and-salt in color, and as long in the legs and arms as the most fastidious could desire. He had on a new shirt and a clean collar, with a handsome black silk cravat tied in a great bow; and a new felt hat was on his head. On his left arm he carried an overcoat, carefully folded, with the lining outside, and in his right hand an umbrella and a cane. In his pockets were half a dozen new handkerchiefs and the case containing Mr. Rooper’s Centennial meerschaum.

Marietta, who was in the hallway when he opened the front door, scarcely knew him as he approached.

“Asaph!” she exclaimed. “What has happened to you? Why, you actually look like a gentleman!”

Asaph grinned. “Do you want me to go to Drummondville right after breakfast to-morrow?” he asked.

“My dear brother,” said Marietta, “don’t crush me by talking about that. But if you could have seen yourself as I saw you, and could have felt as I felt, you would not wonder at me. You must forget all that. I should be proud now to introduce you as my brother to any doctor or king or president. But tell me how you got those beautiful clothes.”

Asaph was sometimes beset by an absurd regard for truth, which much annoyed him. He could not say that he had worked for the clothes, and he did not wish his sister to think that he had run in debt for them. “They’re paid for, every thread of ’em,” he said. “I got ’em in trade. These things is mine, and I don’t owe no man a cent for ’em; and it seems to me that dinner must be ready.”

“And proud I am,” said Marietta, who never before had shown such enthusiastic affection for her brother, “to sit down to the table with such a nice-looking fellow as you are.”

The next morning Mr. Rooper came into Mrs. Himes’s yard, and there beheld Asaph, in all the glory of his new clothes, sitting under the chestnut-tree smoking the Centennial meerschaum pipe. Mr. Rooper himself was dressed in his very best clothes, but he carried with him no pipe.

“Sit down,” said Asaph, “and have a smoke.”

“No,” replied the other; “I am goin’ in the house. I have come to see your sister.”

“Goin’ to begin already?” said Asaph.

“Yes,” said the other; “I told you I was goin’ to begin to-day.”

“Very good,” said his friend, crossing his pepper-and-salt legs; “and you will finish the 17th of August. That’s a good, reasonable time.”

But Mr. Rooper had no intention of courting Mrs. Himes for a month. He intended to propose to her that very morning. He had been turning over the matter in his mind, and for several reasons had come to this conclusion. In the first place, he did not believe that he could trust Asaph, even for a single day, not to oppose him. Furthermore, his mind was in such a turmoil from the combined effect of the constantly present thought that Asaph was wearing his clothes, his hat, and his shoes, and smoking his beloved pipe, and of the perplexities and agitations consequent upon his sentiments toward Mrs. Himes, that he did not believe he could bear the mental strain during another night.