“Evelina,” said Polk, as he stood up suddenly in front of me, “that old Mossback is the finest man in this commonwealth, but from his situation nobody can extract him, unless it is a woman with the wiliness of the devil himself.  Poison the whole bunch and I’ll back you.  But we’ll have to plot it later on.  I see his reverence coming tripping along with a tract in his hand for you and I’ll be considerate enough to sneak through the kitchen, get a hot muffin-cake that has been tantalizing my nose all this time you have been sentimentalizing over me, and return anon when I can have you all to myself in the melting moonlight in the small hours after all religious folk are in bed.  Until then!” And as he went back through the front hall Mr. Haley came down the front walk.

“My dear Miss Shelby, how fortunate I am to find you alone,” he exclaimed with such genuine delight beaming from his nice, good, friendly, gray eyes that I beamed up myself a bit out of pure responsiveness.

“I am so glad to see you, Mr. Haley.  Hasn’t it been a lovely day?” I answered, as I offered him the large rocker Sallie had vacated.

“It has, indeed, and I don’t know when I have been as deeply happy.  This hour with you will be the very climax of the day’s perfections, I feel sure.”

I smiled.

To follow you, Jane, I “let a man look freely into my heart and thus encouraged he opened his to mine” and behold, I found Sallie and the twins and Henrietta all squatting in the Dominie’s cardiac regions, just as comfortably as they do it at Widegables.

“My sympathies have become so enlisted in the struggle which Mrs. Carruthers is having to curb the eccentricities of her oldest daughter that I feel I must lay definite plans to help her.  It is very difficult for a young and naturally yielding woman like Mrs. Carruthers to discipline alone even so young a child as Henrietta.  I know you will help me all you can to help her.  Believe me, my dear friend, even in the short time you have been in Glendale you have become a tower of strength to me.  I feel that I can take my most difficult and sacred perplexities to you.”

Now, what do you think of that, Jane?  Be sure and rub this situation in on all the waiting Five disciples.  I defy any of them to do so well in less than three months.  This getting on a plane of common citizenship with a fellow-man is easy.  That is, with some men.

Still while you are getting on the plane somebody else gets the man.  What about that?  I didn’t want Mr. Haley, but what if I had?

“Yes, Henrietta is a handful, Mr. Haley,” I answered with enthusiasm, for even the mention of Henrietta enlivens me and somehow Mr. Haley’s getting in the game of “curbing” her stirred up my risibles.  “But—­but Sallie already has a good many people to help her with the children.  I have been trying to—­to influence Henrietta—­and she does not swear except on the most exasperating occasions now.”