Dave had said at breakfast that he regretted not being able to go to Wakefield to meet Kate, but that he would be busy in the north field all day.  Hi Holler, the Bartlett chore boy, had been commissioned to go in his stead, and Hi’s toilet, in consequence, had occupied most of the morning.

Mrs. Bartlett was churning in the shadow of the wide porch, the Squire was mending a horse collar with wax thread, and fussing about the heat and the slowness of Hi Holler, who was always punctually fifteen minutes late for everything.

“Confound it, Looizy, what’s keeping that boy; the train’ll get in before he’s started.  Here you, Hi, what’s keeping you?”

The delinquent stood in the doorway, his broad face rippling with smiles; he had spent time on his toilet, but he felt that the result justified it.

His high collar had already begun to succumb to the day, and the labor involved in greasing his boots, which were much in evidence, owing to the brevity of the white duck trousers that needed but one or two more washings, with the accompanying process of shrinking, to convert them into knickerbockers.  Bear’s grease had turned his ordinary curling brown hair into a damp, shining mass that dripped in tiny rills, from time to time, down on his coat collar, but Hi was happy.  Beau Brummel, at the height of his sartorial fame, never achieved a more self-satisfying toilet.

The Squire adjusted his spectacles.  “What are you dressing up like that on a week day for, Hi?  Off with you now; and if you ain’t in time for them cars you’ll catch ‘Hail Columbia’ when you get back.”

“Looizy,” said the Squire, as soon as Hi was out of hearing, “why didn’t Dave go after Katie?  Yes, I know about the hay.  Hay is hay, but it ought not to come first in a man’s affections.”

“You’d better let ’em alone, Amasy; if they’re going to marry they will without any help from us; love affairs don’t seem to prosper much, when old folks interfere.”

“Looizy, it’s my opinion that Dave’s too shy to make up to women folks.  I don’t think he’ll even get up the courage to ask Kate to marry him.”

“Well, I never saw the man yet who was too bashful to propose to the right woman.”  And a great deal of decision went into the churning that accompanied her words.

“Mebbe so, mebbe so,” said the Squire.  He felt that the vagaries of the affections was too deep a subject for him.  “Anyhow, Looizy, I don’t want no old maids and bachelors potterin’ round this farm getting cranky notions in their heads.  Look at the professor.  Why, a good woman would have taken the nonsense out of him years ago.”

Mrs. Bartlett did not have to go far to look at the professor.  He was flying about her front garden at that very moment in an apparently distracted state, crouching, springing, hiding back of bushes and reappearing with the startling swiftness of magic.  The Bartletts were quite used to these antics on the part of their well-paying summer boarder.  He was chasing butterflies—­a manifestly insane proceeding, of course, but if a man could afford to pay ten dollars a week for summer board in the State of New Hampshire, he could afford to chase butterflies.