w," he added,
watching her turn the felt brim under the wisp-broom's strokes, "I'm
thinking some of getting me a regular silk stove-pipe hat."

"Why don't you, then?" she rejoined, but without any ring of glad
acquiescence in her tone. He fancied that her face lengthened a little,
and he instantly ascribed it to recollections of the way in which the
roses had been bullied out of her own headgear.

"You are quite sure, now, pet," he made haste to change the subject,
"that the hired girl can wait just as well as not until fall?"

"Oh, MY, yes!" Alice replied, putting the hat on his head, and smoothing
back his hair behind his ears. "She'd only be in the way now. You see,
with hot weather coming on, there won't be much cooking. We'll take all
our meals out here, and that saves so much work that really what remains
is hardly more than taking care of a bird-cage. And, besides, not having
her will almost half pay for the piano."

"But when cold weather comes, you're sure you'll consent?" he urged.

"Like a shot!" she assured him, and, after a happy little caress, he
started out again on his momentous mission.

"Thurston's" was a place concerning which opinions differed in Octavius.
That it typified progress, and helped more than any other feature of the
village to bring it up to date, no one indeed disputed. One might move
about a great deal, in truth, and hear no other view expressed. But then
again one might stumble into conversation with one small storekeeper
after another, and learn that they united in resenting the existence of
"Thurston's," as rival farmers might join to curse a protracted drought.
Each had his special flaming grievance. The little dry-goods dealers
asked mournfully how they could be expected to compete with an
establishment which could buy bankrupt stocks at a hundred different
points, and make a profit if only one-third of the articles were sold
for more than they would cost from the jobber? The little boot and
shoe dealers, clothiers, hatters, and furriers, the small merchants in
carpets, crockery, and furniture, the venders of hardware and household
utensils, of leathern goods and picture-frames, of wall-paper, musical
instruments, and even toys--all had the same pathetically unanswerable
question to propound. But mostly they put it to themselves, because the
others were at "Thurston's."

The Rev. Theron Ware had entertained rather strong views on this
subject, and that only a week or two ago