“Um!...  Can’t say’s that’s onnatural—­so’s to require callin’ in a doctor.  Live five mile from town, don’t you?  Nearest neighbor nigh on to a mile.  Sairy gits to see company only about so often or not so seldom as that, eh?” Scattergood shut his eyes until there appeared at the corners of them a network of little wrinkles.  “I’m a-goin’ to astonish you, Nahum.  This here hain’t the first girl that ever come down with the complaint Sairy’s got!...  They’s been sev’ral.  Complaint’s older ’n you or me....  Dum near as old as Deacon Pettybone.  Uh-huh!...  She’s got a attack of life, Nahum, and the only cure for it ever discovered is to let her live....  Sairy’s woke up out of childhood, Nahum.  She’s jest openin’ her eyes.  Perty soon she’ll be stirrin’ around brisk....  When you goin’ to drive her in, Nahum?  To-morrer?”

“You—­you advise letting her do this thing?”

“When you goin’ to fetch her in, Nahum?” Scattergood repeated.

“She said she was coming Monday.”

“Um!...  G’-by, Nahum.”  This was Scattergood’s invariable phrase of dismissal, given to friend or enemy alike.  It was characteristic of him that when he was through with a conversation he ended it—­and left no doubt in anybody’s mind that it was ended.  Nahum withdrew apologetically.  Scattergood called after him, “Fetch her here—­to me,” he said, and, automatically, it seemed, reached for the laces of his shoes.  A problem had been presented to him which required a deal of solving, and Scattergood could not concentrate with toes imprisoned in leather.  He even removed the white woolen socks which Mandy, his wife, compelled him to wear in the winter season.  Presently he was twiddling his pudgy toes and concentrating on Sarah Pound.  He waggled his head.  “After livin’ out there,” he said to himself, “she’ll think Coldriver’s livin’—­and so ’tis, so ’tis....  More sometimes ’n ’tis others.  Calculate this is like to be one of ’em....”

Scattergood was just thinking about dinner on Monday when Nahum Pound brought his daughter Sarah into the store.  One glance at Sarah’s face taught Scattergood that she was in suspicious, if not defiant, mood.  If he had a doubt of the correctness of his observation, Sarah removed it efficiently.

“Scattergood Baines,” she said, “if you think you’re going to boss me like you do father, and everybody else in this town, you’re mistaken.  I won’t have it....  Understand that, I won’t have it.”

Scattergood rubbed his chin and puffed out his fat cheeks, and smiled with deceiving mildness.  “Sairy,” he said, “you needn’t to be scairt of my interferin’ with you in your goin’s and comin’s.  I’d sooner stick my hand into a kittle of b’ilin’ pitch than to meddle with a young woman in your state of mind....  I hain’t hankerin’ to raise no blisters.”

“I won’t stay penned up ’way out there in the country another day.  I’ve got a right to live.  I’ve got a right to see folks and to go places, and—­to—­to live!”