“I’d about as soon eat pizen!” stormed the other.

“Then let’s not do it jest now,” the Cap’n returned, sweetly.  “I’ve got something more important to talk about than stumpage.  Money and business ain’t much in this world, after all, when you come to know there’s something diff’runt.  Love is what I’m referrin’ to.  Word has jest come to me that you’re in love, too, the same as I am.”

The gaunt Colonel glared malevolently down on the sturdy figure sprawling in the garden chair.  The Cap’n’s pipe clouds curled about his head, and his hands were stuffed comfortably into his trousers pockets.  His face beamed.

“Some might think to hear you talk that you was a soft old fool that had gone love-cracked ’cause a woman jest as soft as you be has showed you some attention,” choked the Colonel.  “But I know what you’re hidin’ under your innocent-Abigail style.  I know you’re a jill-poke.”

“A what?” blandly asked Sproul.

“That’s woods talk for the log that makes the most trouble on the drive—­and it’s a mighty ornery word.”

“Er—­something like ‘the stabboard pi-oogle,’ which same is a seafarin’ term, and is worse,” replied the Cap’n, with bland interest in this philological comparison.  “But let’s not git strayed off’m the subject.  Your sister, Louada Murilla—­”

The gaunt man clacked his bony fists together in ecstasy of rage.

“She was christened Sarah Jane, and that’s her name.  Don’t ye insult the father and mother that gave it to her by tackin’ on another.  I’ve told ye so once; I tell ye so—­”

“Louada Murilla,” went on the Cap’n, taking his huge fists out of his pockets and cocking them on his knees, not belligerently, but in a mildly precautionary way, “told me that you had been engaged to a woman named Phar—­Phar—­”

“Oh, give her any name to suit ye!” snarled the Colonel.  “That’s what ye’re doin’ with wimmen round here.”

“You know who I mean,” pursued Sproul, complacently, “seein’ that you’ve had fifteen years to study on her name.  Now, bein’ as I’m one of the fam’ly, I’m going to ask you what ye’re lally-gaggin’ along for?  Wimmen don’t like to be on the chips so long.  I am speakin’ to you like a man and a brother when I say that married life is what the poet says it is.  It’s—­”

“I’ve stood a good deal from you up to now!” roared Ward, coming close and leaning over threateningly.  “You come here to town with so much tar on ye that your feet stuck every time you stood still in one place; you married my sister like you’d ketch a woodchuck; you’ve stuck your fingers into my business in her name—­but that’s jest about as fur as you can go with me.  There was only one man ever tried to advise me about gitting married—­and he’s still a cripple.  There was no man ever tried to recite love poetry to me.  You take fair warnin’.”

“Then you ain’t willin’ to listen to my experience, considerin’ that I’ve been a worse hard-shell than you ever was in marriage matters, and now see the errors of my ways?” The Cap’n was blinking up wistfully.