Well," she observed, "I don't want to be unlikely and disobligin'.
Far's he's concerned, he'd rather be traipsin' round the country than
stay to home, any day; though it's been so long sence he took ME to ride
that I don't know's I'd know how to act."

"Why, Ketury!" protested her husband. "How you talk! Didn't I drive you
down to the graveyard only last Sunday--or the Sunday afore?"

"Graveyard! Yes, I notice our rides always fetch up at the graveyard.
You're always willin' to take me THERE. Seems sometimes as if you
enjoyed doin' it."

"Now, Keturah! you know yourself that 'twas you proposed goin' there.
You said you wanted to look at our lot, 'cause you was afraid 'twan't
big enough, and you didn't know but we'd ought to add on another piece.
You said that it kept you awake nights worryin' for fear when I passed
away you wouldn't have room in that lot for me. Land sakes! don't I
remember? Didn't you give me the blue creeps talkin' about it?"

Mrs. Bangs ignored this outburst. Turning to the school teacher, she
said with a sigh:

"Well, I guess he can go. I'll get along somehow. I hope he'll be
careful of the buggy; we had it painted only last January."

Mrs. Tripp ventured a hinted question concerning the teacher's errand
at Trumet. The reply being noncommittal, the widow cheerfully prophesied
that she guessed 'twas going to rain or snow next day. "It's about time
for the line storm," she added.

But it did not storm, although a brisk, cold gale was blowing when,
after breakfast next morning, the "horse and team," with Bailey in his
Sunday suit and overcoat, and Miss Dawes on the buggy seat beside him,
turned out of the boarding-house yard and started on the twelve-mile
journey to Trumet.

It was a bleak ride. Denboro, the village adjoining Bayport on the bay
side, is a pretty place, with old elms and silverleafs shading the main
street in summer, and with substantial houses set each in its trim yard.
But beyond Denboro the Trumet road winds out over rolling, bare hills,
with cranberry bogs, now flooded and skimmed with ice, in the hollows
between them, clumps of bayberry and beach-plum bushes scattered over
their rounded slopes, and white scars in their sides showing where the
cranberry growers have cut away the thin layer of coarse grass and moss
to reach the sand beneath, sand which they use in preparing their bogs
for the new vines.

And the wind! There is always a breeze along the Trumet road, even
in