“I tell you, you can’t reason with him in his state!”

“Well, I’ll raise it somehow.”

“You’ll have to be quick about it, then,” she returned, concisely.  “He’ll be here in a few minutes, and it’s cash down for the first three months, or he’ll let the other party have it.”

“But he promised—­”

“That don’t make any difference.  He’s drunk, and he thought father’d offer to make you an advance; but father just told him to come down here, that you were being married, and say he’d poke all your things out in the road without you paid.”

The young man turned.  Sarah blocked his way.  She was a tall, good-looking girl, somewhat older than Joe, and she looked straight up into his face.

“See here, Joe; you know what makes father act so, and so do I, and so does mother, and mother and I want you should take this money; it’ll make us feel better.”  Sarah flushed, but she looked at him as directly as if she had been his sister.

Joe felt an admiration for her that was almost reverence.  It carried him for the moment beyond the consideration of his own predicament.

“No, I don’t know what makes him act so either,” he cried, hotly.  “Oh Lord, Sarah, you sha’n’t say such a thing!”

She interrupted him.  “Won’t you take it?”

He turned again:  “You’re just as good as you can be, but I can manage some way.”

“I’ll watch for Lanham,” she answered, quietly, “and keep him talking as long as I can.  He’s just drunk enough to make a scene.”

Half-way to the house, Joe met Harry Barker.

“What did she want?” he inquired, curiously.

When Joe told him he plunged into his pocket and drew out two dollars, then offered to go among the young fellows and collect the balance of the amount, but Joe caught hold of him.

“Think of something else.”

“I could explain to the boys—­”

“You go and ask Mrs. Lawrence if she won’t step out on the porch,” the other commanded; “she’s my great-aunt, and I never asked anything of her before.”

But Mrs. Lawrence was not sympathetic.  She told Joe flatly that she never lent money, and that the water-set was as much as she could afford to give.  “It ain’t paid for, though,” she added; “and if you’d rather have the money, I suppose I can send it back.  But seems to me I shouldn’t have been in such an awful hurry to git married; I should ‘a’ waited a month or so, till I had something to git married on.  But you’re just like your father—­never had no calculation.  Do you want I should return that silver?”

Joe hesitated.  It was an easy way out of the difficulty.  Then a vision of Esther rose before him, and the innocent preparations she had been making for the display of the gift; “No,” he answered, shortly.  And Mrs. Lawrence, with a shake of the shoulders as though she threw off all responsibility in her young relative’s affairs, bustled away.  “I’m going to keep that water-set if everything else has to go,” he declared to the astonished Harry.  “Let ’em set me out in the road; I guess I’ll git along.”  He had a humorous vision of himself and Esther trudging forth, with the water-set between them, to seek their fortune.