o'clock with Mrs. Martin Waddell. There Sarah had had a seat at the frame
and heard all the gossip of the countryside. The nimble fingered Ann
Rutledge--a daughter of the tavern folk--had sat beside her. Ann was a
slender, good-looking girl of seventeen with blue eyes and a rich crown
of auburn hair and a fair skin well browned by the sunlight. She was the
most dexterous needle worker in New Salem. It was Mrs. Peter Lukins, a
very lean, red haired woman with only one eye which missed no matrimonial
prospect--who put the ball in play so to speak.

"Ann, if Honest Abe gits you, you'll have to spend the first three months
makin' a pair o' breeches for him. It'll be a mile o' sewin'."

"I reckon she'd have to spend the rest o' her life keepin' the buttons on
'em," said Mrs. John Cameron.

"Abe doesn't want me and I don't want Abe so I reckon some other girl
will have to make his breeches," said Ann.

"My lord! but he's humbly," said Mrs. Alexander Ferguson.

"Han'some is that han'some does," Mrs. Martin Waddell remarked. "I don't
know anybody that does han'somer."

"Han'some is that han'some looks I say," Mrs. Lukins continued with a
dreamy look in her eye.

"I like a man that'll bear inspection--up an' a comin' an' neat an' trim
as a buck deer," Mrs. Ferguson confessed.

"An' the first ye know he's up an' a goin'," said Mrs. Samuel Hill. "An