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“Well,” said Mr. Rooper, “I’ll think about it.”

“That’s right,” said Asaph, rubbing his knees with his hands. “That’s right. But now tell me, Thomas Rooper, supposin’ you get Marietta, what are you goin’ to do for me?”

“For you?” exclaimed the other. “What have you got to do with it?”

“A good deal,” said Asaph. “If you get Marietta with her fifteen hundred a year–and it wouldn’t surprise me if it was eighteen hundred–and her house and her garden and her cattle and her field and her furniture, with not a leg loose nor a scratch, you will get her because I proposed her to you, and because I backed you up afterward. And now, then, I want to know what you are goin’ to do for me?”

“What do you want?” asked Thomas.

“The first thing I want,” said Asaph, “is a suit of clothes. These clothes is disgraceful.”

“You are right there,” said Mr. Rooper. “I wonder your sister lets you come around in front of the house. But what do you mean by clothes–winter clothes or summer clothes?”

“Winter,” said Asaph, without hesitation. “I don’t count summer clothes. And when I say a suit of clothes, I mean shoes and hat and underclothes.”

Mr. Rooper gave a sniff. “I wonder you don’t say overcoat,” he remarked.

“I do say overcoat,” replied Asaph. “A suit of winter clothes is a suit of clothes that you can go out into the weather in without missin’ nothin’.”

Mr. Rooper smiled sarcastically. “Is there anything else you want?” he asked.

“Yes,” said Asaph, decidedly; “there is. I want a umbrella.”

“Cotton or silk?”

Asaph hesitated. He had never had a silk umbrella in his hand in his life. He was afraid to strike too high, and he answered, “I want a good stout gingham.”

Mr. Rooper nodded his head. “Very good,” he said. “And is that all?”

“No,” said Asaph, “it ain’t all. There is one more thing I want, and that is a dictionary.”

The other man rose to his feet. “Upon my word,” he exclaimed, “I never before saw a man that would sell his sister for a dictionary! And what you want with a dictionary is past my conceivin’.”

“Well, it ain’t past mine,” said Asaph. “For more than ten years I have wanted a dictionary. If I had a dictionary I could make use of my head in a way that I can’t now. There is books in this house, but amongst ’em there is no dictionary. If there had been one I’d been a different man by this time from what I am now, and like as not Marietta wouldn’t have wanted any other man in the house but me.”

Mr. Rooper stood looking upon the ground; and Asaph, who had also arisen, waited for him to speak. “You are a graspin’ man, Asaph,” said Thomas. “But there is another thing I’d like to know: if I give you them clothes, you don’t want them before she’s married?”

“Yes, I do,” said Asaph. “If I come to the weddin’, I can’t wear these things. I have got to have them first.”

Mr. Rooper gave his head a little twist. “There’s many a slip ‘twixt the cup and the lip,” said he.

“Yes,” said Asaph; “and there’s different cups and different lips. But what’s more, if I was to be best man–which would be nateral, considerin’ I’m your friend and her brother–you wouldn’t want me standin’ up in this rig. And that’s puttin’ it in your own point of view, Thomas.”

“It strikes me,” said the other, “that I could get a best man that would furnish his own clothes; but we will see about that. There’s another thing, Asaph,” he said, abruptly; “what are Mrs. Himes’s views concernin’ pipes?”

This question startled and frightened Asaph. He knew that his sister could not abide the smell of tobacco and that Mr. Rooper was an inveterate smoker.

“That depends,” said he, “on the kind of tobacco. I don’t mind sayin’ that Marietta isn’t partial to the kind of tobacco I smoke. But I ain’t a moneyed man and I can’t afford to buy nothin’ but cheap stuff. But when it comes to a meerschaum pipe and the very finest Virginia or North Carolina smoking-tobacco, such as a moneyed man would be likely to use–“