"Go in, grandfather!" called the girl's voice from the garden, to
which Fletcher responded as decisively.

"For Heaven's sake, let me manage my own affairs, Maria. You seem
to have inherited your poor mother's pesky habit of meddling."

"Well, I told you a gentleman was waiting," returned the girl
stubbornly. "You didn't let us know he was coming, either, and
Lindy says there isn't a thing fit to eat for supper."

Fletcher snorted, and then, before entering the house, stopped to
haggle with an old Negro woman for a pair of spring chickens
hanging dejectedly from her outstretched hand, their feet tied
together with a strip of faded calico.

"How much you gwine gimme fer dese, marster?" she inquired
anxiously, deftly twirling them about until they swung with heads
aloft.

Rising to the huckster's instinct, Fletcher poked the offerings
suspiciously beneath their flapping wings.

"Thirty cents for the pair--not a copper more," he responded
promptly; "they're as poor as Job's turkey, both of 'em."

"Lawdy, marster, you know better'n dat."

"They're skin and bones, I tell you; feel 'em yourself. Well,
take it or leave it, thirty cents is all I'll give."