or.

"If the deacon gets here afore I come back," she said, pausing with her
hand on the knob, "you 'd better say 's what he told me yesterday in
confidence 'n' what I told him in consequence is still a secret; it 'll
be pleasanter for you both so."

"I--" said Mrs, Lathrop.

"Good-by," said Susan.

Mrs. Lathrop slept some that afternoon and rocked more. She experienced
no very marked flutterings in the region of her heart; indeed, she was
astonished herself at the calmness of her sensations.

The deacon had not come when Susan returned. Susan looked somewhat
puzzled.

"Anybody been here since me?" she inquired, not facing her friend, but
examining the stovepipe with interest.

"No; no--"

"Mrs. Jilkins is all safe," she said next.

"I'm so--"

"That automobile run 'way past Cherry Pond, 'n' their hired man see her
ridin' by 'n' made after her on a mule. The gasolene give out before the
mule did, so he hauled her home, 'n' the man in the cap come 'n' took
the automobile back to town."

"So it's all--"

"They all landed over at the drug-store 'n' got in 'n' started out
fresh. Mr. Jilkins settled for the five hundred, 'n' they went off
feelin' real friendly. They run out across the square, an' then--" Susan
hesitated. "You got a shock yesterday," she said, still not looking at
her friend, but speaking sympathetically, "'n' it seems too bad to give
you another to-day; but you 'll have to know--"

"Heaven pro--" cried Mrs. Lathrop.

"They run over the deacon comin' out o' the station. They did n't see
him, an' he did n't see them. He ain't dead."

Mrs. Lathrop was silent.

"Mrs. Allen took him home. Of course that means Polly 'll get him in the
end."

Mrs. Lathrop was silent for a long time. Finally she said very
deliberately:

"Maybe it's just as--"

"It's better," said her friend, with decision; "for the man settled with
the deacon for fifteen hundred."

* * * * *

OLD MAN ELY'S PROPOSAL

Mrs. Lathrop had been dumbfounded to see a horse and wagon being driven
into her neighbor's yard a little before noon one warm spring day. Her
eyesight was not good enough to identify the horse's driver, but she
hung breathlessly in her kitchen window and peered gaspingly out upon
his boldness and daring during the whole four minutes that it took him
to hitch to a clothes-pole; and then, when the fell deed was
accomplished, she watched