“Is he dead?”

“They say so, but you can’t believe everything you hear.  Now, don’t hurry.  What most killed Swallow was just this:  He hated Pole like poison, and when he got a five hundred dollar mortgage-grip on Pole’s pasture meadow, he kept that butcher-man real uneasy.  When you were all away, Swallow began to squeeze—­what those lawyers call ‘foreclose.’  It’s just some lawyer word for robbery.”

“It’s pretty bad, Mrs. Crocker, but two people are waiting for you and this isn’t exactly Government business.”

“Got to hear the end, Captain.”

“I suppose so—­what next?” Dixy wondered why the spur touched him even lightly.

“Pole, he told Mrs. Penhallow all about it, and she wasn’t as glad to help her meat-man as she was to bother Swallow, so she took over the mortgage.  When the Squire first came home from Washington and wasn’t like he was later, she told him, of course.  Now everybody knows Pole’s ways, and so the Squire he says to me—­he was awful amused—­’Mrs. Crocker, I asked Mrs. Penhallow how Pole was going to pay her.’  She said she did put that at Pole, and he said it wouldn’t take long to eat up that debt at Grey Pine.  He wouldn’t have dared to speak like that to your aunt if she hadn’t got to be so meek-like, what with war and bother.”  By this time Dixy was with reason displeased and so restless that Mrs. Crocker let the reins drop, but as John Penhallow rode away she cried, “The price of meats at Grey Pine has been going up ever since, until Miss Leila—­” The rest was lost to the Captain.  He rode away laughing as he reflected on what share of Pole’s debt he was to devour.

CHAPTER XXXI

The bustle and folly of a rummage-sale was once in every two or three years a frolic altogether pleasant to quiet Westways.  It enabled Ann Penhallow and other wise women to get rid of worn-out garments and other trash dear to the male mind.  When Leila complained of the disturbing antecedents of a rummage-sale, Mrs. Crocker, contributive of unasked wisdom, remarked, “Men have habits, and women don’t; women have blind instincts.  You’ll find that out when you’re married.  You see marriage is a kind of voyage of discovery.  You just remember that and begin early to keep your young man from storing away useless clothes and the like.  That’s where a rummage-sale comes in handy.”

Leila laughed.  “Why not sell the unsatisfactory young man, Mrs. Crocker?”

“Well, that ain’t a bad idea,” said the post-mistress slyly, “if he’s a damaged article—­a rummage-sale of husbands not up to sample.”

“A very useful idea,” said the young woman.  “Good-bye.”