Though my wife had declined to risk a ceremonious call on our neighbors
as a family, I saw no reason why I should not speak to the husband as an
individual, when I happened to encounter him by the wayside. I made
several approaches to do so, when it occurred to my penetration that my
neighbor had the air of trying to avoid me. I resolved to put the
suspicion to the test, and one forenoon, when he was sauntering along on
the opposite side of the road, in the vicinity of Fisher's sawmill, I
deliberately crossed over to address him. The brusque manner in which he
hurried away was not to be misunderstood. Of course I was not going to
force myself upon him.

It was at this time that I began to formulate uncharitable suppositions
touching our neighbors, and would have been as well pleased if some of
my choicest fruit-trees had not overhung their wall. I determined to
keep my eyes open later in the season, when the fruit should be ripe to
pluck. In some folks, a sense of the delicate shades of difference
between _meum_ and _tuum_ does not seem to be very strongly developed in
the Moon of Cherries, to use the old Indian phrase.

I was sufficiently magnanimous not to impart any of these sinister
impressions to the families with whom we were on visiting terms; for I
despise a gossip. I would say nothing against the persons up the road
until I had something definite to say. My interest in them was--well,
not exactly extinguished, but burning low. I met the gentleman at
intervals, and passed him without recognition; at rarer intervals I saw
the lady.

After a while I not only missed my occasional glimpses of her pretty,
slim figure, always draped in some soft black stuff with a bit of