“I got to get down to the store kind of early this morning, Abby,” he observed, frowning slightly at his empty plate.

“I’ll have ’em for you in two shakes of a lamb’s tail, papa,” soothed Mrs. Daggett, to whom the above remark had come to signify not merely a statement of fact, but a gentle reprimand.  “I know you like ’em good and hot; and cold buckwheat cakes certainly is about th’ meanest vict’als....  There!”

And she transferred a neat pile of the delicate, crisp rounds from the griddle to her husband’s plate with a skill born of long practice.

“About that furnitur’,” remarked Mr. Daggett, gazing thoughtfully at the golden stream of sweetness, stolen from leaf and branch of the big sugar maples behind the house to supply the pewter syrup-jug he suspended above his cakes, “I guess it’s a fact she wants it, all right.”

“I should think she’d rather have new furniture; Henry, they do say the house is going to be handsome.  But you say she wants the old stuff?  Ain’t that queer, for anybody with means.”

“Well, that Orr girl beats me,” Mr. Daggett acknowledged handsomely.  “She seems kind of soft an’ easy, when you talk to her; but she’s got ideas of her own; an’ you can’t no more talk ’em out of her—­”

“Why should you try to talk ’em out of her, papa?” inquired Mrs. Daggett mildly.  “Mebbe her ideas is all right; and anyhow, s’long as she’s paying out good money—­”

“Oh, she’ll pay! she’ll pay!” said Mr. Daggett, with a large gesture.  “Ain’t no doubt about her paying for what she wants.”

He shoved his plate aside, and tipped back in his chair with a heavy yawn.

“She’s asked me to see about the wall paper, Abby,” he continued, bringing down his chair with a resounding thump of its sturdy legs.  “And she’s got the most outlandish notions about it; asked me could I match up what was on the walls.”

“Match it up?  Why, ain’t th’ paper all moldered away, Henry, with the damp an’ all?”

“’Course it is, Abby; but she says she wants to restore the house—­fix it up just as ‘twas.  She says that’s th’ correct thing to do.  ‘Why, shucks!’ I sez, ‘the wall papers they’re gettin’ out now is a lot handsomer than them old style papers.  You don’t want no old stuff like that,’ I sez.  But, I swan! you can’t tell that girl nothing, for all she seems so mild and meachin’.  I was wonderin’ if you couldn’t shove some sense into her, Abby.  Now, I’d like th’ job of furnishin’ up that house with new stuff.  ’I don’t carry a very big stock of furniture,’ I sez to her; but—­”

“Why, Hen-ery Daggett!” reproved his wife, “an’ you a reg’lar professing member of the church!  You ain’t never carried no stock of furniture in the store, and you know it.”