“‘I’m a-comin’, ‘screams Effie, startin’ for the door.  ’Susannah’s in a tearin’ hurry to get through early to-day,’ she adds to me.  ’She’s got the afternoon off, and her beau’s comin’ to take her buggy ridin’.  He’s from over Harniss way somewheres and they say he’s just lovely.  My sakes!  I wisht somebody’d take me to ride.  Ah hum! cal’late I’ll have to wait for my Butler man.  Say, Mr. Wingate, you won’t mention my fortune to a soul, will you?  I never told anybody but you.’

“I promised to keep mum and she cleared out.  After dinner, as I was smokin’, along with Cap’n Jonadab, on the side piazza, a horse and buggy drove in at the back gate.  A young chap with black curly hair was pilotin’ the craft.  He was a stranger to me, wore a checkerboard suit and a bonfire necktie, and had his hat twisted over one ear.  Altogether he looked some like a sunflower goin’ to seed.

“‘Who’s that barber’s sign when it’s to home?’ says I to Jonadab.  He snorted contemptuous.

“‘That?’ he says.  ’Don’t you know the cut of that critter’s jib?  He plays pool “for the house” in Web Saunders’s place over to Orham.  He’s the housekeeper’s steady comp’ny—­steady by spells, if all I hear’s true.  Good-for-nothin’ cub, I call him.  Wisht I’d had him aboard a vessel of mine; I’d ‘a’ squared his yards for him.  Look how he cants his hat to starboard so’s to show them lovelocks.  Bah!’

“‘What’s his name?’ I asks.

“’Name?  Name’s Butler—­Simeon Butler.  Don’t you remember . . .  Hey?  What in tunket . . .?’

“Both of us had jumped as if somebody’d touched off a bombshell under our main hatches.  The windows of the dining room was right astern of us.  We whirled round, and there was Effie.  She’d been clearin’ off one of the tables and there she stood, with the smashed pieces of an ice-cream platter in front of her, the melted cream sloppin’ over her shoes, and her face lookin’ like the picture of Lot’s wife just turnin’ to salt.  Only Effie looked as if she enjoyed the turnin’.  She never spoke nor moved, just stared after that buggy with her black eyes sparklin’ like burnt holes in a blanket.

“I was too astonished to say anything, but Jonadab had his eye on that smashed platter and he had things to say, plenty of ’em.  I walked off and left Effie playin’ congregation to a sermon on the text ’Crockery costs money.’  You’d think that ice-cream dish was a genuine ugly, nicked ‘antique’ wuth any city loon’s ten dollars, instead of bein’ only new and pretty fifty-cent china.  I felt real sorry for the poor girl.

“But I needn’t have been.  That evenin’ I found her on the back steps, all Sunday duds and airs.  Her hair had a wire friz on it, and her dress had Joseph’s coat in Scriptur’ lookin’ like a mournin’ rig.  She’d have been real handsome—­to a body that was color blind.

“‘My, Effie!’ says I, ‘you sartin do look fine to-night.’

“‘Yup,’ she says, contented, ’I guess likely I do.  Hope so, ’cause I’m wearin’ all I’ve got.  Say, Mr. Wingate,’ says she, excited as a cat in a fit, ‘did you see him?’