“There’s Jathrop!” said Mrs. Lathrop, with sudden and complete success.  Jathrop was her son, so baptized through a fearful slip of the tongue at a critical moment.  He was meant to have been John.

Miss Clegg gave such a start that she dropped her fan over the fence.

“Well, Heaven forgive me!” she cried,—­“‘n’ me ’t never thought of him once, ‘n’ him so handy right on the other side of the fence!  Did I ever!”

“He ain’t thir—­” said Mrs. Lathrop, picking up the fan.

“I don’t care.  What’s twelve years or so when it’s the woman ’s ’as got the property?  Well, Mrs. Lathrop, I certainly am obliged to you for mentionin’ him, for I don’t believe he ever would ‘a’ occurred to me in kingdom come.  ‘N’ here I’ve been worryin’ my head off ever since supper-time ‘n’ all for suthin’ ’s close ’s Jathrop Lathrop.  But I had good cause to worry, ‘n’ now ‘t it’s over I don’t mind mentionin’ the reason ‘n’ tellin’ you frank ‘n’ plain ’t I’d begun on my things.  I cut out a pink nightgown last night, a real fussy one, ‘n’ I felt sick all over ’t the thought ’t perhaps I’d wasted all that cloth.  There wasn’t nothin’ foolish about cuttin’ out the nightgown, for I’d made up my mind ’t if it looked too awful fancy on ’t I’d just put it away for the oldest girl when she gets married, but o’ course ’f I can’t get a husband stands to reason there’ll be no oldest girl, ‘n’ all that ten cent gingham ‘t Shores is sellin’ off’t five ’d be a dead waste o’ good stuff.”

Mrs. Lathrop chewed her clover.

“Do you suppose there’ll be any trouble with Jathrop?  Do you suppose it’ll matter any to him which side o’ the fence he lives on?”

Mrs. Lathrop shook her head slowly.

“I sh’d think he ought to be only too pleased to marry me ’f I want him to, all the days ’t I tended him when he was a baby!  My, but he was a cute little fellow!  Everybody was lookin’ for him to grow up a real credit to you then.  Well, ’s far ’s that goes, it’s a ill wind ’t blows no good, ‘n’ no one c’n deny ’t he’s been easy for you to manage, ‘n’ what’s sauce f’r the goose is sauce f’r the gander, so I sh’ll look to be equally lucky.”

Mrs. Lathrop looked proud and pleased.

“Why can’t you ask him to-night ‘n’ let me know the first thing in the mornin’?  That’ll save me havin’ to come ‘way aroun’ by the gate, you know.”

Mrs. Lathrop assented to the obvious good sense of this proposition with one emphatic nod of her head.

“‘N’ I’ll come out jus’ ’s quick ‘s I can in the mornin’ ‘n’ hear what he said; I’ll come ’s soon ’s ever I can get father ‘n’ the dishes washed up.  I hope to Heaven father’ll sleep more this night ’n he did last.  He was awful restless last night.  He kept callin’ f’r things till finally I had to take a pillow and go down on the dinin’-room lounge to keep from bein’ woke up any more.”

“Do you think he’s—­”