triple
quillings, before Dely's mother, too, began to be consoled. She was a
pleasant, placid, feeble-natured woman, who liked her husband very well,
and fretted at him in a mild, persistent way a good deal. He swore and
chewed tobacco, which annoyed her; he also kept a tight grip of his
money, which was not pleasant; but she missed him very much when he
died, and cried and rocked, and said how afflicted she was, as much as
was necessary, even in the neighbors' opinion. But as time went on, she
found the business very hard to manage; even with Dely and the foreman
to help her, the ledger got all astray, and the day-book followed its
example; so when old Tom Kenyon, who kept the tavern half a mile farther
out, took to coming Sunday nights to see the "Widder German," and
finally proposed to share her troubles and carry on the bakery in a
matrimonial partnership, Mrs. German said she "guessed she would," and
announced to Dely on Monday morning that she was going to have a
step-father. Dely was astonished and indignant, but to no purpose. Mrs.
German cried and rocked, and rocked and cried again, rather more
saliently than when her husband died, but for all that she did not
retract; and in due time she got into the stage with her elderly lover
and went to Meriden, where they got married, and came home next day to
carry on the bakery.

Joe German had been foolish enough to leave all his property to his
wife, and Dely had no resource but to stay at home and endure her
disagreeable position as well as she could, for Tom Kenyon swore and
chewed, and smoked beside; moreover, he drank,--not to real
drunkenness, but enough to make him cross and intractable; worse than
all, he had a son, the only child of his first marriage, and it soon
became unpleasantly evident to Dely that Steve Kenyon had a mind to
marry her, and his father had a mind he should. Now it is all very well
to marry a person one likes, but to go through that ceremony with one
you dislike is more than anybody has a right to require, in my opinion,
as well as Dely's; so when her mother urged upon her the various
advantages of the match, Steve Kenyon being the present master and
prospective owner of his father's tavern, a great resort for
horse-jockeys, cattle-dealers, and frequenters of State and County
fairs, Dely still objected to marry him. But the more she objected, the
more her mother talked, her step-father swore, and the swaggering lover
persisted in his atten