“Now, Dilly, I didn’t say I was agoin’ to,” protested Rawdy.

“An’ me needin’ a new dress, and ’ain’t had one to my back for two years, and them Carroll women in a different one every time they appear out, and the girl having enough clothes for a Vanderbilt.  I guess Stella Griggs will rue the day.  She’s a fool, and always was.  If you can afford to give that man money you can afford to get me a new dress.  I’d go to the weddin’—­it’s free, in the church—­if I had anything decent to wear.”

“Now, Dilly, what can I do?  I leave it to you,” asked Samson Rawdy, with confessed helplessness.

“Do?” said she.  “Why, tell him he’s got to pay ahead or he can’t have the cerridges.  If you’re afraid to, I’ll ask him.  I ain’t afraid.”

“Lord!  I ain’t afraid, Dilly,” said Rawdy.

“You’d better clean up, after supper, an’ go up there and tell him,” said Dilly Rawdy, mercilessly.

In the end Rawdy obeyed, having shaved and washed, and set forth.  When he returned he was jubilant.

“He’s a gentleman, I don’t care what they say,” said he, “and he treated me like a gentleman.  Gave me a cigar, and asked me to sit down.  He was smokin’, himself, out on the porch.  The women folks were in the house.

“Did he pay you?” asked Mrs. Rawdy.

Then Rawdy shook a fat roll of bills in her face.  “Look at here,” said he.

“The whole of it?”

“Every darned mill; my cerridges and the New Sanderson ones, too.”

“Well, now, ain’t you glad you did the way I told you to?”

“Lord! he’d paid me, anyway,” declared Rawdy.  “He’s a gentleman.  Women are always dreadful scart.”

“It’s a pity men wasn’t a little scarter sometimes,” said his wife.

Rawdy, grinning, tossed a bill to her.  “Wa’n’t you sayin’ you wanted a dress?” said he.

“I ruther guess I do.  I ’ain’t had one for two years.”

“I guess I’d better git a silk hat to wear.  I suppose I shall have to drive some of the Carrolls’ folks,” said Rawdy, with a timid look at his wife.  A silk hat had always been his ambition, but she had always frowned upon it.

“Well, I would,” said she, cordially.

Samson Rawdy told everybody how Carroll had paid him in advance—­“every cent, sir; and he didn’t believe, for his part, half the stories that were told about him.  He guessed that he paid, in the long run, as well as anybody in Banbridge.  Carroll wa’n’t the only one that hadn’t paid him, not by a long-shot.  He guessed some of them that talked about Carroll had better look to home.  He called Carroll a gentleman, and any time when anything happened that his carriage wa’n’t on hand when the train come in, he was ready an’ willin’ to drive him up, or any of his folks, an’ if they didn’t have a quarter handy right on the spot, he wa’n’t goin’ to lay awake sweatin’ over it.”