ugh working against hope, was still not without resolute will.

Dame Barringer, who had seen him coming up the walk, bustled in:
"Good-morning, Allen. How beat out you do look! Now, I like a stiddy young
man, but don't you think you run this thing of workin' into the ground?"

"Wail, maybe so," said Golyer with a weary smile--"leastways I've been
a-running this spade into the ground all the morning, and--"

"_You_ want buttermilk--that's your idee: ain't it, now?"

"Well, Mizzes Barringer, I reckon you know my failin's."

The good woman trotted off to the dairy, and Susie sewed demurely, waiting
with some trepidation for what was to come next.

"Susie Barringer," said a low, husky voice which she could scarcely
recognize as Golyer's, "I've come to ask pardon--not for nothing I've
done, for I never did and never could do you wrong--but for what I thought
for a while arter you left me this morning. It's all over now, but I tell
_you_ the Bad Man had his claws into my heart for a spell. Now it's all
over, and I wish you well. I wish your husband well. If ever you git into
any trouble where I can help, send for me: it's my right. It's the last
favor I ask of you."

Susceptible Susie cried a little again. Allen, watching her with his
ambushed eyes, said, "Don't take it to heart, Tudie. Perhaps there is
better days in store for me yet."

This did not appear to comfort Miss Barringer in the least. She was
greatly grieved when she thought she had broken a young man's heart: she
was still more dismal at the slightest intimation that she had not. If any
explanation of this paradox is required, I would observe, quoting a phrase
much in vogue among the witty writers of the present age, that Miss Susie
Barringer was "a very female woman."

So pretty Susan's rising sob subsided into a coquettish pout by the time
her mother came in with the foaming pitcher of subacidulous nectar, and
plied young Golyer with brimming beakers of it with all the beneficent
delight of a Lady Bountiful.

"There, Mizzes Barringer! there's about as much as I can tote. Temperance
in all things."

"Very well, then, you work less and play more. We never get a sight of you
lately. Come in neighborly and play checkers with Tudie."

It was the darling wish of Mother Barringer's heart to see her daughter
married and settled with "a stiddy young man that you knowed all about,
and his folks before him." She had observed with great disquietude the
brillia