hree people can't look out of 'em
without crowdin'. Ain't that a wash-boiler he's handin' down? Well, it's
a mercy; he's ben borrowin' long enough!"

"What goes on after dark I ain't responsible for," commented old Mrs.
Bascom, "but no new wash-boiler has gone into Rube Hobson's door in the
daytime for many a year, and I'll be bound it means somethin'. There
goes a broom, too. Much sweepin' he'll get out o' Eunice; it's a slick
'n' a promise with her!"

"When did you begin to suspicion this, Diademy?" asked Almira Berry.
"I've got as much faculty as the next one, but anybody that lives on
the river road has just got to give up knowin' anything. You can't keep
runnin' to the store every day, and if you could you don't find out much
nowadays. Bill Peters don't take no more interest in his neighbors than
a cow does in election."

"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