Seffy. Though, of course, in the final disposition of the matter, he was
sure that no girl so nice as Sally would marry such a person as Sam
Pritz, with no extremely visible means of support--a salary of four
dollars a week, and an odious reputation for liquor. And it was for
these things, all of which were known (for Baumgartner had not a single
secret) that the company at the store detected the personal equation in
Old Baumgartner's communications.

Seffy had almost arrived by this time, and Sally was in the store! With
Sam! The situation was highly dramatic. But the old man consummately
ignored this complication and directed attention to his son. For him,
the molasses-tapper did not exist. The fact is he was overjoyed. Seffy,
for once in his life, would be on time! He would do the rest.

"Now, boys, chust look at 'em! Dogged if they ain't bose like one
another! How's the proferb? Birds of a feather flock wiss one another?
I dunno. Anyhow, Sef flocks wiss Betz constant. And they understand one
another good. Trotting like a sidewise dog of a hot summer's day!" And
he showed the company, up and down the store-porch, just how a sidewise
dog would be likely to trot on a hot summer day--and then laughed
joyously.

If there had been an artist eye to see they would have been well worth
its while--Seffy and the mare so affectionately disparaged. And, after
all, I am not sure that the speaker himself had not an artist's eye. For
a spring pasture, or a fallow upland, or a drove of goodly cows deep in
his clover, I know he had. (Perhaps you, too, have?) And this was his
best mare and his only son.

The big bay, clad in broad-banded harness, soft with oil and glittering
with brasses, was shambling indolently down the hill, resisting her own
momentum by the diagonal motion the old man had likened to a dog's
sidewise trot. The looped trace-chains were jingling a merry dithyramb,
her head was nodding, her tail swaying, and Seffy, propped by his elbow
on her broad back, one leg swung between the hames, the other keeping
time on her ribs, was singing:

"'I want to be an angel
And with the angels stand,
A crown upon my forehead
A harp within my hand--'"

His adoring father chuckled. "I wonder what for kind of anchel he'd
make, anyhow? And Betz--they'll have to go together. Say, I wonder if it
_is_ horse-anchels?"

No one knew; no one offered a suggestion.

"Well, it ought to be. Say--he ken perform ci