“Yes, mother is famous for her coffee.  I know that’s fine, and you can praise it; but I’ll not permit any ironical remarks concerning myself.”

“I wouldn’t, if I were you, especially when you are mistress of the situation.  Still, I can’t help having my opinion of you.  Why in the world didn’t you choose as your present something stylish from the city?”

“Something, I suppose you mean, in harmony with my very stylish surroundings and present appearance.”

“I didn’t mean anything of the kind, and fancy you know it.  Ah! here are the overalls.  Now deeds, not words.  I’ll leave my coat, watch, cuffs, and all impedimenta with you, Mrs. Banning.  Am I not a spectacle to men and gods?” he added, drawing up the garment, which ceased to be nether in that it reached almost to his shoulders.

“Indeed you are,” cried Sue, holding her side from laughing.  Mrs. Banning also vainly tried to repress her hilarity over the absurd guy into which the nattily-dressed city man had transformed himself.

“Come,” he cried, “no frivolity!  You shall at least say I kept my word about the trees to-day.”  And they started at once for the scene of action, Minturn obtaining on the way a shovel from the tool-room.

“To think she’s eighteen years old and got a beau!” muttered the farmer, as he and Hiram started two new holes.  They were dug and others begun, yet the young people had not returned.  “That’s the way with young men nowadays—­’big cry, little wool.’  I thought I was going to have Sue around with me all day.  Might as well get used to it, I suppose.  Eighteen!  Her mother’s wasn’t much older when—­yes, hang it, there’s always a when with these likely girls.  I’d just like to start in again on that day when I tossed her into the haymow.”

“What are you talking to yourself about, father?”

“Oh!  I thought I had seen the last of you to-day.”

“Perhaps you will wish you had before night.”

“Well, now, Sue! the idea of letting Mr. Minturn rig himself out like that!  There’s no use of scaring the crows so long before corn-planting.”  And the farmer’s guffaw was quickly joined by Hiram’s broad “Yah! yah!”

She frowned a little as she said, “He doesn’t look any worse than I do.”

“Come, Mr. Banning, Solomon in all his glory could not so take your daughter’s eye to-day as a goodly number of trees standing where she wants them.  I suggest that you loosen the soil with the pickaxe, then I can throw it out rapidly.  Try it.”

The farmer did so, not only for Minturn, but for Hiram also.  The lightest part of the work thus fell to him.  “We’ll change about,” he said, “when you get tired.”

But Minturn did not get weary apparently, and under this new division of the toil the number of holes grew apace.

“Sakes alive, Mr. Minturn!” ejaculated Mr. Banning, “one would think you had been brought up on a farm.”