her I'd take over the store. Well, yes,' he says, 'if
you'll give me the time on it we mentioned, I'll take it over. An' if
Elspie'll marry me an' let me belong to her, an' her to me.'

"'Marry you?' says Elspie, understandin' how he'd rilly spoke to her.
'_Me?_'

"Eb straightened himself up, an' his eyes was bright an' keen as the
edge o' somethin'.

"'Yes, you,' he says gentle. 'An' me.'

"An' then she looked at him like he was lookin' at her. An' it come to
me how it'd been with them two since the night they'd locked up my house
together. An' I felt all hushed up, like the weddin' was beginnin'.

"But Timothy an' Silas, they wa'n't feelin' so hushed.

'Look a-here!' says Timothy Toplady, all pent up. 'She ain't discharged
from the county house yet.'

"'I don't care a _dum_,' says Eb, an' I must say I respected him for the
'dum'--that once.

"'Look a-here,' says Silas, without a bit o' delicacy. 'She ain't
responsible. She ain't--'

"'She is too,' Eb cut him short. 'She's just as responsible as anybody
can be when they're lonesome enough to die. _I_ ought 'a' know that.
Shut up, Silas Sykes,' says Eb, all het up. 'You've just et a hot
breakfast your wife hed ready for you. You don't know what you're
talkin' about.'

"An' then Eb sort o' swep' us all up in the dust-pan.

"'No more words about it,' s'he, 'an' I don't care what any one o' you
says--Mis' Cally nor _none_ o' you. So you might just as well say less.
Tell 'em, Elspie!'

"She looked up at him, smilin' a little, an' he turned toward her, like
we wasn't there. An' I nudged Mis' Merriman an' made a move, an' she
turns right away, like she'd fair forgot the funeral flowers. An'
Timothy an' Silas actually followed us, but talkin' away a good
deal--like men will.

"None of us looked back from the top o' the hill, though I will own I
would 'a' loved to. An' about up there I heard Silas say:--

"'Oh, well. I _am_ gettin' kind o' old an' some stiff to take a new
business on myself.'

"An' Timothy, he adds absent: 'I don't s'pose, when you come right down
to it, as Alice County'll rilly care a whoop.'

"An' Mis' Fire Chief Merriman, she wipes up her eyes, an', 'It does seem
like courtin' with Sum's flowers,' she says, sighin', 'but I'm rill glad
for Eb.'

"An' Eb not bein' there to agree with her, I says to myself, lookin' at
the mornin' sun on the cemetery an' thinkin' o' them two back there
among the baskets an' set pieces--I says, low to mysel