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“I can’t get mother Bascom to see it as I do,” said Diadema, “but for one thing she’s ben carryin’ home bundles ’bout every other night for a month, though she’s ben too smart to buy anythin’ here at this store. She had Packard’s horse to go to Saco last week. When she got home, jest at dusk, she drove int’ the barn, ‘n’ bimeby Pitt Packard come to git his horse,–‘t was her own buggy she went with. She looked over here when she went int’ the house, ‘n’ she ketched my eye, though ‘t was half a mile away, so she never took a thing in with her, but soon as’t was dark she made three trips out to the barn with a lantern, ‘n’ any fool could tell ‘t her arms was full o’ pa’cels by the way she carried the lantern. The Hobsons and the Emerys have married one another more ‘n once, as fur as that goes. I declare if I was goin’ to get married I should want to be relation to somebody besides my own folks.”

“The reason I can hardly credit it,” said Hannah Sophia, “is because Eunice never had a beau in her life, that I can remember of. Cyse Higgins set up with her for a spell, but it never amounted to nothin’. It seems queer, too, for she was always so fond o’ seein’ men folks round that when Pitt Packard was shinglin’ her barn she used to go out nights ‘n’ rip some o’ the shingles off, so ‘t he’d hev more days’ work on it.”

“I always said ‘t was she that begun on Rube Hobson, not him on her,” remarked the Widow Buzzell. “Their land joinin’ made courtin’ come dretful handy. His critters used to git in her field ’bout every other day (I always suspicioned she broke the fence down herself), and then she’d hev to go over and git him to drive ’em out. She’s wed his onion bed for him two summers, as I happen to know, for I’ve been ou’ doors more ‘n common this summer, tryin’ to fetch my constitution up. Diademy, don’t you want to look out the back way ‘n’ see if Rube’s come home yet?”

“He ain’t,” said old Mrs. Bascom, “so you needn’t look; can’t you see the curtains is all down? He’s gone up to the Mills, ‘n’ it’s my opinion he’s gone to speak to the minister.”

“He hed somethin’ in the back o’ the wagon covered up with an old linen lap robe; ‘t ain’t at all likely he ‘d ‘a’ hed that if he’d ben goin’ to the minister’s,” objected Mrs. Jot.

“Anybody’d think you was born yesterday, to hear you talk, Diademy,” retorted her mother-in-law. “When you ‘ve set in one spot’s long’s I hev, p’raps you’ll hev the use o’ your faculties! Men folks has more ‘n one way o’ gettin’ married, ‘specially when they ‘re ashamed of it. . . . Well, I vow, there’s the little Hobson girls comin’ out o’ the door this minute, ‘n’ they ‘re all dressed up, and Mote don’t seem to be with ’em.”

Every woman in the room rose to her feet, and Diadema removed her murderous eye from a fly which she had been endeavoring to locate for some moments.

“I guess they ‘re goin’ up to the church to meet their father ‘n’ Eunice, poor little things,” ventured the Widow Buzzell.

“P’raps they be,” said old Mrs. Bascom sarcastically; “p’raps they be goin’ to church, takin’ a three-quart tin pail ‘n’ a brown paper bundle along with ’em. . . . They ‘re comin’ over the bridge, just as I s’posed. . . . Now, if they come past this house, you head ’em off, Almiry, ‘n’ see if you can git some satisfaction out of ’em. . . . They ain’t hardly old enough to hold their tongues.”