unlight. She was the
most dexterous needle worker in New Salem. It was Mrs. Peter Lukins, a
very lean, red haired woman with only one eye which missed no matrimonial
prospect--who put the ball in play so to speak.

"Ann, if Honest Abe gits you, you'll have to spend the first three months
makin' a pair o' breeches for him. It'll be a mile o' sewin'."

"I reckon she'd have to spend the rest o' her life keepin' the buttons on
'em," said Mrs. John Cameron.

"Abe doesn't want me and I don't want Abe so I reckon some other girl
will have to make his breeches," said Ann.

"My lord! but he's humbly," said Mrs. Alexander Ferguson.

"Han'some is that han'some does," Mrs. Martin Waddell remarked. "I don't
know anybody that does han'somer."

"Han'some is that han'some looks I say," Mrs. Lukins continued with a
dreamy look in her eye.

"I like a man that'll bear inspection--up an' a comin' an' neat an' trim
as a buck deer," Mrs. Ferguson confessed.

"An' the first ye know he's up an' a goin'," said Mrs. Samuel Hill. "An
then all ye have to look at is a family o' children an' the empty bread
box."

"Wait until Abe has shed his coat an' is filled out a little. He'll be a
good-lookin' man an' I wouldn't wonder," Mrs. Waddell maintained.

"If Abe lives he'll be a great man, I think," said Mrs. Dr. Allen. "I
forgot how he looked when I heard him talking the other night at the
debate in the schoolhouse about the flogging of sailors with the cat o'
nine tails. He has a wonderful gift. If I were Ann I should be proud of
his friendship and proud to go with him to the parties."

"I am," said Ann meekly, with her eyes upon her work. "I love to hear him
talk, too."

"Oh, land o' mercy! He's good company if you only use your ears," Mrs.
Ferguson remarked. "Mis' Traylor, where did you git your man?"

"At Vergennes. We were born in the same neighborhood and grew up
together," said Sarah.

"Now there's the kind of a man! Stout as a buffalo an' as to looks I'd
call him, as ye might say, real copasetic." Mrs. Lukins expressed this
opinion solemnly and with a slight cough. Its last word stood for nothing
more than an indefinite depth of meaning. She added by way of drawing the
curtain of history: "I'll bet _he_ didn't dilly dally long when he made
up his mind. I reckon he were plum owdacious."

"What a pretty pattern this is!" said Sarah with a sudden shift of front.

Mrs. Lukins was not to be driven from the Elysian fields so easil