"Madge, dear," said Miss Susan, busily twisting her scanty, iron-grey
hair up into a hard little knob at the back of her head before Madge's
glass, "you just wait. I'm not young, and I'm not pretty, and I'm not
in love, but I've more gumption than you and Burton have or ever will
have. You keep your eyes open and see if you can learn something.
You'll need it if you go up to live with old John Ellis."

Burton had returned to the turnip field, but old John Ellis was taking
his ease with a rampant political newspaper on the cool verandah of
his house. Looking up from a bitter editorial to chuckle over a
cutting sarcasm contained therein, he saw a tall, angular figure
coming up the lane with aggressiveness written large in every fold and
flutter of shawl and skirt.

"Old Susan Oliver, as sure as a gun," said old John with another
chuckle. "She looks mad clean through. I suppose she's coming here to
blow me up for refusing to let Burton take that girl of hers. She's
been angling and scheming for it for years, but she will find who she
has to deal with. Come on, Miss Susan."

John Ellis laid down his paper and stood up with a sarcastic smile.

Miss Susan reached the steps and skimmed undauntedly up them. She did
indeed look angry and disturbed. Without any preliminary greeting she
burst out into a tirade that simply took away her complacent foe's
breath.

"Look here, John Ellis, I want to know what this means. I've
discovered that that young upstart of a son of yours, who ought to be
in short trousers yet, has been courting my niece, Madge Oliver, all
summer. He has had the impudence to tell me that he wants to marry
her. I won't have it, I tell you, and you can tell your son so. Marry
my niece indeed! A pretty pass the world is coming to! I'll never
consent to it."

Perhaps if you had searched Greenwood and all the adjacent districts
thoroughly you might have found a man who was more astonished and
taken aback than old John Ellis was at that moment, but I doubt it.
The wind was completely taken out of his sails and every bit of the
Ellis contrariness was roused.

"What have you got to say against my son?" he fairly shouted in his
rage. "Isn't he good enough for your girl, Susan Oliver, I'd like to
know?"

"No, he isn't," retorted Miss Susan deliberately and unflinchingly.
"He's well enough in his place, but you'll please to remember, John
Ellis, that my niece is an Oliver, and the Olivers don't marry beneath