remained up to this instant minute!"

"He ain't lived up to his name much," remarked Cephas. "He's to home for
his meals, but I guess his wife never sees him between times."

"If the cat hed lived mebbe she'd 'a' been better comp'ny on the
whole," chuckled Uncle Bart. "Companion was allers kind o' dreamy
an' absent-minded from a boy. I remember askin' him what his wife's
Christian name was (she bein' a stranger to Riverboro) an' he said he
didn't know! Said he called her Mis' Bixby afore he married her an' Mis'
Pike afterwards!"

"Well, there 's something turrible queer 'bout this marryin' business,"
and Cephas drew a sigh from the heels of his boots. "It seems's if a man
hedn't no natcheral drawin' towards a girl with a good farm 'n' stock
that was willin' to have him! Seems jest as if it set him ag'in' her
somehow! And yet, if you've got to sing out o' the same book with a girl
your whole lifetime, it does seem's if you'd ought to have a kind of a
fancy for her at the start, anyhow!"

"You may feel dif'rent as time goes on, Cephas, an' come to see
Feeble--I would say Phoebe--as your mother does. 'The best fire don't
flare up the soonest,' you know." But old Uncle Bart saw that his son's
heart was heavy and forbore to press the subject.

Annabel Franklin had returned to Boston after a month's visit and to her
surprise had returned as disengaged as she came. Mark Wilson, thoroughly
bored by her vacuities of mind, longed now for more intercourse with
Patty Baxter, Patty, so gay and unexpected; so lively to talk with, so
piquing to the fancy, so skittish and difficult to manage, so temptingly
pretty, with a beauty all her own, and never two days alike.

There were many lions in the way and these only added to the zest
of pursuit. With all the other girls of the village opportunities
multiplied, but he could scarcely get ten minutes alone with Patty. The
Deacon's orders were absolute in regard to young men. His daughters were
never to drive or walk alone with them, never go to dances or "routs" of
any sort, and never receive them at the house; this last mandate
being quite unnecessary, as no youth in his right mind would have gone
a-courtin' under the Deacon's forbidding gaze. And still there were
sudden, delicious chances to be seized now and then if one had his
eyes open and his wits about him. There was the walk to or from the
singing-school, when a sentimental couple could drop a few feet,
at least, behind the r