“Yes, father!” Rhoda intercepted his address to Master Gammon.  “Yes, father!” she hardened her accent.  “It is for my sister.  He does a good thing.  Let him do it.”

“Mas’ Gammon, what ha’ ye got there?” the farmer sung out.

But Master Gammon knew that he was about his own business.  He was a difficult old man when he served the farmer; he was quite unmanageable in his private affairs.

Without replying, he said to Mrs. Sumfit,—­

“I’d gummed it.”

The side of the box showed that it had been made adhesive, for the sake of security, to another substance.

“That’s what’s caused ye to be so long, Mas’ Gammon?”

The veteran of the fields responded with a grin, designed to show a lively cunning.

“Deary me, Mas’ Gammon, I’d give a fortnight’s work to know how much you’m saved, now, I would.  And, there!  Your comfort’s in your heart.  And it shall be paid to you.  I do pray heaven in mercy to forgive me,” she whimpered, “if ever knowin’ly I hasted you at a meal, or did deceive you when you looked for the pickings of fresh-killed pig.  But if you only knew how—­to cookit spoils the temper of a woman!  I’d a aunt was cook in a gentleman’s fam’ly, and daily he dirtied his thirteen plates—­never more nor never less; and one day—­was ever a woman punished so! her best black silk dress she greased from the top to the bottom, and he sent down nine clean plates, and no word vouchsafed of explanation.  For gentlefolks, they won’t teach themselves how it do hang together with cooks in a kitchen—­”

“Jump up, Mas’ Gammon,” cried the farmer, wrathful at having been deceived by two members of his household, who had sworn to him, both, that they had no money, and had disregarded his necessity.  Such being human nature!

Mrs. Sumfit confided the termination of her story to Rhoda; or suggested rather, at what distant point it might end; and then, giving Master Gammon’s box to her custody, with directions for Dahlia to take the boxes to a carpenter’s shop—­not attempting the power of pokers upon them—­and count and make a mental note of the amount of the rival hoards, she sent Dahlia all her messages of smirking reproof, and delighted love, and hoped that they would soon meet and know happiness.

Rhoda, as usual, had no emotion to spare.  She took possession of the second box, and thus laden, suffered Robert to lift her into the cart.  They drove across the green, past the mill and its flashing waters, and into the road, where the waving of Mrs. Sumfit’s desolate handkerchief was latest seen.

A horseman rode by, whom Rhoda recognized, and she blushed and had a boding shiver.  Robert marked him, and the blush as well.

It was Algernon, upon a livery-stable hack.  His countenance expressed a mighty disappointment.

The farmer saw no one.  The ingratitude and treachery of Robert, and of Mrs. Sumfit and Master Gammon, kept him brooding in sombre disgust of life.  He remarked that the cart jolted a good deal.