s goin' up and hoops goin' down," he continued. "Cur'us, ain't
it? But then, I don' know as 'tis; woods all bein' cut off--poles
gittin' scurcer; hoops bein' shoved in from Down East. That don' seem
just right, now, does it--but then, other folks must make a livin', too.
Still, I should think they might take up suthin' else; and yet, they
might say that about me. Understand, I don' mean to say that they
actually do say so; I don' want to run down any man unless I know--"

"I can't stand this," said Eph to himself; "I don't wonder that they
always used to put Joshua off at the first port, when he tried to go
coasting. They said he talked them crazy with nothing.

"I'll go into the house and see Aunt Lyddy," he said, aloud. "I'm
loafing this afternoon."

"All right! all right!" said Joshua. "Lyddy'll be glad to see ye--that
is, as glad as she would be to see anybody," he added, reaching out for
a pole. "Now, I don' s'pose that sounds very well; but still, you know
how she is--she allus likes to hev folks to talk, and then she's allus
sayin' talkin' wears on her; but I ought not to say that to you, because
she allus likes to see you--that is, as much as she likes to see
anybody--in fact, I think, on the whole--"

"Well, I'll take my chances," said Eph, laughing, and he opened the gate
and went in.

Joshua's wife, whom everybody called Aunt Lyddy, was oscillating in a
rocking-chair in the kitchen, and knitting. It was currently reported
that Joshua's habit of endlessly retracting and qualifying every idea
and modification of an idea which he advanced, so as to commit himself
to nothing, was the effect of Aunt Lyddy's careful revision.

"I s'pose she thought 'twas fun to be talked deef when they was
courtin'," Captain Seth had once sagely remarked. "Prob'ly it sounded
then like a putty piece on a seraphine; but I allers cal'lated she'd git
her fill of it, sooner or later. You most gin'lly git your fill o' one
tune."

"How are you this afternoon, Aunt Lyddy?" asked Eph, walking in without
knocking, and sitting down near her.

"So as to be able to keep about," she replied. "It is a great mercy I
ain't afflicted with falling out of my chair, like Hepsy Jones, ain't
it?"

"I've brought you some oysters," he said. "I set the basket down on the
door-step. I just took them out of the water myself from the bed I
planted to the west of the water-fence."

"I always heard you was a great fisherman," said Aunt Lyddy, "but I