"_You_ want buttermilk--that's your idee: ain't it, now?"

"Well, Mizzes Barringer, I reckon you know my failin's."

The good woman trotted off to the dairy, and Susie sewed demurely, waiting
with some trepidation for what was to come next.

"Susie Barringer," said a low, husky voice which she could scarcely
recognize as Golyer's, "I've come to ask pardon--not for nothing I've
done, for I never did and never could do you wrong--but for what I thought
for a while arter you left me this morning. It's all over now, but I tell
_you_ the Bad Man had his claws into my heart for a spell. Now it's all
over, and I wish you well. I wish your husband well. If ever you git into
any trouble where I can help, send for me: it's my right. It's the last
favor I ask of you."

Susceptible Susie cried a little again. Allen, watching her with his
ambushed eyes, said, "Don't take it to heart, Tudie. Perhaps there is
better days in store for me yet."

This did not appear to comfort Miss Barringer in the least. She was
greatly grieved when she thought she had broken a young man's heart: she
was still more dismal at the slightest intimation that she had not. If any
explanation of this paradox is required, I would observe, quoting a phrase
much in vogue among the witty writers of the present age, that Miss Susie
Barringer was "a very female woman."

So pretty Susan's rising sob subsided into a coquettish pout by the time
her mother came in with the foaming pitcher of subacidulous nectar, and
plied young Golyer with brimming beakers of it with all the beneficent