“All this fuss about Barney Thayer,” said Hannah Berry.

“How did you hear about it?” Mrs. Barnard asked with a glance at Charlotte, who was sitting erect with her cheeks very red and her mouth tightly closed.

“Never mind how I heard,” replied Hannah.  “I did hear, an’ that’s enough.  Now I want to know if you’re really goin’ to set down like an old hen an’ give up, an’ let this match between Charlotte an’ a good, smart, likely young man like Barnabas Thayer be broken off on account of Cephas Barnard’s crazy freaks?”

Sarah stiffened her neck.  “There ain’t no call for you to speak that way, Hannah.  They got to talkin’ over the ’lection.”

“The ‘lection!  I’d like to know what business they had talkin’ about it Sabbath night anyway?  I ain’t blamin’ Barnabas so much; he’s younger an’ easier stirred up; but Cephas Barnard is an old man, an’ he has been a church-member for forty year, an’ he ought to know enough to set a better example.  I’d like to know what difference it makes about the ’lection anyway?  What odds does it make which one is President if he rules the country well?  An’ that they can’t tell till they’ve tried him awhile anyway.  I guess they don’t think much about the country; it’s jest to have their own way about it.  I’d like to know what mortal difference it’s goin’ to make to Barney Thayer or Cephas Barnard which man is President?  He won’t never hear of them, an’ they won’t neither of them make him rule any different after he’s chose.  It’s jest like two little boys—­one wants to play marbles ‘cause the other wants to play puss-in-the-corner, an’ that’s all the reason either one of ’em’s got for standin’ out.  Men ain’t got any too much sense anyhow, when you come right down to it.  They don’t ever get any too much grown up, the best of ’em.  I’d like to know what Cephas Barnard has got to say because he’s drove a good, likely young man like Barnabas Thayer off an’ broke off his daughter’s match?  It ain’t likely she’ll ever get anybody now; young men like him, with nice new houses put up to go right to housekeepin’ in as soon as they are married, don’t grow on every bush.  They ain’t quite so thick as wild thimbleberries.  An’ Charlotte ain’t got any money herself, an’ her father ain’t got any to build a house for her.  I’d like to know what he’s got to say about it?”

Mrs. Barnard put up her apron and began to weep helplessly.

“Don’t, mother,” said Charlotte, in an undertone.  But her mother began talking in a piteous wailing fashion.

“You hadn’t ought to talk so about Cephas,” she moaned.  “He’s my husband.  I guess you wouldn’t like it if anybody talked so about your husband.  Cephas ain’t any worse than anybody else.  It’s jest his way.  He wa’n’t any more to blame than Barney; they both got to talkin’.  I know Cephas is terrible upset about it this mornin’; he ’ain’t really said so in so many words, but I know by the way he acts.  He said this mornin’ that