It happened just about then that the arrears of rent for the village hotel had so accumulated on Mr. Spouter, the last occupant, that the owner, an indulgent man, finally had said, what he had been expected for years and years to say, that he could not wait on Mr. Spouter forever and eternally.  It was at this very nick, so to speak, that Mr. Pike made to Mr. Fluker the suggestion to quit a business so far beneath his powers, sell out, or rent out, or tenant out, or do something else with his farm, march into town, plant himself upon the ruins of Jacob Spouter, and begin his upward soar.

Now Mr. Fluker had many and many a time acknowledged that he had ambition; so one night he said to his wife: 

“You see how it is here, Nervy.  Farmin’ somehow don’t suit my talons.  I need to be flung more ’mong people to fetch out what’s in me.  Then thar’s Marann, which is gittin’ to be nigh on to a growd-up woman; an’ the child need the s’iety which you ’bleeged to acknowledge is sca’ce about here, six mile from town.  Your brer Sam can stay here an’ raise butter, chickens, eggs, pigs, an’—­an’—­an’ so forth.  Matt Pike say he jes’ know they’s money in it, an’ special with a housekeeper keerful an’ equinomical like you.”

It is always curious the extent of influence that some men have upon wives who are their superiors.  Mrs. Fluker, in spite of accidents, had ever set upon her husband a value that was not recognized outside of his family.  In this respect there seems a surprising compensation in human life.  But this remark I make only in passing.  Mrs. Fluker, admitting in her heart that farming was not her husband’s forte, hoped, like a true wife, that it might be found in the new field to which he aspired.  Besides, she did not forget that her brother Sam had said to her several times privately that if his brer Pink wouldn’t have so many notions and would let him alone in his management, they would all do better.  She reflected for a day or two, and then said: 

“Maybe it’s best, Mr. Fluker.  I’m willin’ to try it for a year, anyhow.  We can’t lose much by that.  As for Matt Pike, I hain’t the confidence in him you has.  Still, he bein’ a boarder and deputy sheriff, he might accidentally do us some good.  I’ll try it for a year providin’ you’ll fetch me the money as it’s paid in, for you know I know how to manage that better’n you do, and you know I’ll try to manage it and all the rest of the business for the best.”

To this provision Mr. Fluker gave consent, qualified by the claim that he was to retain a small margin for indispensable personal exigencies.  For he contended, perhaps with justice, that no man in the responsible position he was about to take ought to be expected to go about, or sit about, or even lounge about, without even a continental red in his pocket.

The new house—­I say new because tongue could not tell the amount of scouring, scalding, and whitewashing that that excellent housekeeper had done before a single stick of her furniture went into it—­the new house, I repeat, opened with six eating boarders at ten dollars a month apiece, and two eating and sleeping at eleven, besides Mr. Pike, who made a special contract.  Transient custom was hoped to hold its own, and that of the county people under the deputy’s patronage and influence to be considerably enlarged.