Just here occurred the accident already described.  Knife and fish ball descended upon the waistcoat belonging to the “Sunday suit.”  Lavinia flew for warm water, ammonia, and a cloth, and the soiled waistcoat was industriously scrubbed.  The cleansing process was accompanied by a lively tongue lashing, to which Kyan paid little attention.

“Engaged?” he kept repeating.  “Gracie Van Horne engaged?  Engaged?  En—­”

“Be still, you poll parrot!  Dear! dear! dear! look at them spots.  Yes, yes; don’t say it again; she’s engaged.”

“Who—­who—­who—­”

“Now you’ve turned to an owl, I do believe.  ‘Hoo! hoo!’ She’s engaged to Nat Hammond, that’s who.  Nothin’ very surprisin’ about that, is there?”

Kyan made no answer.  He rubbed his forehead, while his sister rubbed the grease spots.  In jerky sentences she told of the engagement and how the news had reached her.

“I can’t believe it,” faltered Abishai.  “She goin’ to marry Nat!  Why, I can’t understand.  I thought—­”

“What did you think?  See here! you ain’t keepin’ anything from me, be you?”

The answer was enthusiastically emphatic.

“No, no, no, no!” declared Kyan.  “Only I didn’t know they was—­was—­”

“Neither did anybody else, but what of it?  Folks don’t usually advertise when they’re keepin’ comp’ny, do they?”

“No—­o.  But it’s gen’rally found out.  I know if I was keepin’ comp’ny—­or you was, La-viny—­”

His sister started.

“What makes you say that?” she demanded, looking quickly up from her rubbing.

“Why, nothin’.  Only if I was—­or you was, somebody’d see somethin’ suspicious and kind of drop a hint, and—­”

“Better for them if they ’tended to their own affairs,” was the sharp answer.  “I ain’t got any patience with folks that’s always talkin’ about their neighbor’s doin’s.  There! now you go out and stand alongside the cook stove till that wet place dries.  Don’t you move till ’tis dry, neither.”

So to the kitchen went Kyan, to stand, a sort of living clotheshorse, beside the hot range.  But during the drying process he rubbed his forehead many times.  Remembering what he had seen in the grove he could not understand; but he also remembered, even more vividly, what Keziah Coffin had promised to do if he ever breathed a word.  And he vowed again that that word should not be breathed.

The death and funeral of Captain Eben furnished Trumet with a subject of conversation for a week or more.  Then, at the sewing circle and at the store and after prayer meeting, both at the Regular meeting house and the Come-Outer chapel, speculation centered on the marriage of Nat and Grace.  When was it to take place?  Would the couple live at the old house and “keep packet tavern” or would the captain go to sea again, taking his bride with him?  Various opinions, pro and con, were expressed by the speculators, but no one could answer authoritatively, because none knew except those most interested, and the latter would not tell.