“Might’s well walk Hector into the barn and uncheck him, Zeke,” she said.  “They’ll keep him more’n a half an hour.  That young man, ’Zekiel Forbes,—­that young man’s my hope.”  Mrs. Forbes spoke impressively and shook her forefinger to emphasize her words.

“What you hoping about him?” asked ’Zekiel, laying down the harness and proceeding to lead the gray horse up the incline into the barn.

“Shouldn’t wonder a mite if he was our deliverer,” went on Mrs. Forbes.  “I saw it in Mrs. Evringham’s eye that he suited her, the first night that she met him here at dinner.  I like him first-rate, and I don’t mean him any harm; but he’s one of these young doctors with plenty of money at his back, bound to have a fashionable practice and succeed.  His face is in his favor, and I guess he knows as much as any of ’em, and he can afford the luxury of a wife brought up the way Eloise Evringham has been.  That’s right, Zeke.  Unfasten the check-rein, though the doctor don’t use a mean one, I must say.  I only hope there’s a purgatory for the folks that use too short check-reins on their horses.  I hope they’ll have to wear ’em themselves for a thousand years, and have to stand waiting at folks’ doors frothing at the mouth, and the back of their necks half breaking when the weather’s down to zero and up to a hundred.  That’s what I hope!”

’Zekiel grinned.  “You want ’em to try the cold place and the hot one too, do you?”

“Yes I do, and to stay in the one that hurts the most.  The man that uses a decent check-rein on his horse,” continued Mrs. Forbes, dropping into a philosophizing tone, “is apt to be as decent to his wife.  The doctor would be a great catch for that girl, and I think,” dropping her voice, “her mother’d be liable to live with ’em.”

“You’re keeping that dark from the doctor, I s’pose?” remarked ’Zekiel.

“H’m.  You needn’t think I go chattering around that house the way I do out here.  I’ve got a great talent, if I do say it, for minding my own business.”

“Good enough,” drawled ’Zekiel.  “I heard tell once of a firm that made a great fortune just doing that one thing.”

“Don’t you be sassy now.  I’ve always waited on Mr. Evringham while he ate his meals, and that’s the time he’d often speak out to me about things if he felt in the humor, so that in all these years ’t isn’t any wonder if I’ve come to feel that his business is mine too.”

“Just so,” returned ’Zekiel, with a twinkle in his eye.

“It’s been as plain as your nose that the interlopers don’t like to have me there.  Not that they have anything special against me, but they’d like to have someone younger and stylisher to hand them their plates.  I’ll never forget one night when they’d been here about a week, and I think Mr. Evringham had begun to suspect they were fixtures,—­I’d felt it from the first,—­Mrs. Evringham said, ’Why father, does Mrs. Forbes always wait on your table?  I had supposed she was temporarily taking the place of your butler or your waitress.’”