Democratic barbecue, that we attended without reference to our personal
politics, and solely for the sake of Judge Piper and the girls; nor
did he go to the Agricultural Fair Ball--open to all. His abstention we
believed to be owing to his lameness; to a wholesome consciousness
of his own social defects; or an inordinate passion for reading cheap
scientific textbooks, which did not, however, add fluency nor conviction
to his speech. Neither had he the abstraction of a student, for his
accounts were kept with an accuracy which struck us, who dealt at the
store, as ignobly practical, and even malignant. Possibly we might have
expressed this opinion more strongly but for a certain rude vigor of
repartee which he possessed, and a suggestion that he might have a
temper on occasion. "Them red-haired chaps is like to be tetchy and
to kinder see blood through their eyelashes," had been suggested by an
observing customer.

In short, little as we knew of the youngest Miss Piper, he was the last
man we should have suspected her to select as an admirer. What we did
know of their public relations, purely commercial ones, implied the
reverse of any cordial understanding. The provisioning of the Piper
household was entrusted to Del, with other practical odds and ends of
housekeeping, not ornamental, and the following is said to be a truthful
record of one of their overheard interviews at the store:--

The youngest Miss Piper, entering, displacing a quantity of goods in the
centre to make a sideways seat for herself, and looking around loftily
as she took a memorandum-book and pencil from her pocket.

"Ahem! If I ain't taking you away from your studies, Mr. Sparrell,
maybe you'll be good enough to look here a minit;--but" (in affected
politeness) "if I'm disturbing you I can come another time."