ey ust to have a spat every week about something but
they allus made it up. But I heard Lindy say that after you come here,
'Zeke he got huffy and Huldy she got independent, and they hain't spoke
to each other nigh on two weeks."

This was a revelation to Quincy, but he was to hear more about it very
soon.

"How long be you goin' to stay, Mr. Sawyer?"

"I haven't decided," said Quincy.

"What's your business?" persisted Mrs. Putnam.

"I am a lawyer," replied Quincy.

Mrs. Putnam looked at him inquiringly and said, "Be n't you rather young
for a lawyer? How old be you, anyway?"

Quincy decided to take a good humored part in his cross examination and
said without a smile, "I am twenty-three years, two months, sixteen days
old."

"Be you?" exclaimed Mrs. Putnam. "I shouldn't have said you were a day
over nineteen."

Quincy never felt his youth so keenly before. He determined to change
the conversation.

"Did you attend the concert, Mrs. Putnam?"

"No," said she. "Pa and me don't go out much; he's deefer'n a stone post
and I've had the rheumatiz so bad in my knees for the last five years
that I can't walk without crutches;" and she pointed to a pair that lay
on the floor beside her chair.

During this conversation old Mr. Putnam had been eying Quincy very
keenly. He blurted out, "He's a chip of the old block, Heppy; he looks
just as Jim did when he fust came to this town. Did yer say yer had an
Uncle Jim?"

Quincy shook his head.

Mrs. Putnam turned to her husband and yelled, "Now you shet up, Silas,
and don't bother the young man. Jim Sawyer ain't nothin' to be proud of,
and I don't blame the young man for not ownin' up even if Jim is his
uncle."

Quincy made another attempt to change the conversation. "Your daughter
is a very fine singer, Mrs. Putnam."

"Well, I s'pose so," said she; "there's been enough money spent on her
to make suthin' of her. As for me I don't like this folderol singin'.
Why, when she ust to be practisin' I had to go up in the attic or else
stuff cotton in my ears. But my son, Jehoiakim Jones Putnam, he sot
everythin' by Lucinda, and there wasn't anythin' she wanted that she
couldn't have. He's dead now, but he left more'n a hundred thousand
dollars, that he made speculatin'."

"Then your daughter will be quite an heiress one of these days, Mrs.
Putnam?"

She answered, "She won't get none of my money. Jehoiakim left her all of
his'n, but before she got it she had to sign a pa