'Stepanfetchit,' they used to call him them days,--Stepanfetchit Waterman."

"Good name for him yet," came in acid tones from the sink. "He's still
steppin' an' fetchin', only it's Rose that's doin' the drivin' now."

"I'm not driving anybody, that I know of," answered Rose, with heightened
color, but with no loss of her habitual self-command.

"Then, when he graduated from errants," went on the crafty old man, who knew
that when breakfast ceased, churning must begin, "Steve used to get
seventy-five cents a day helpin' clear up the river--if you can call this here
silv'ry streamlet a river. He'd pick off a log here an' there an' send it
afloat, an' dig out them that hed got ketched in the rocks, and tidy up the
banks jest like spring house-cleanin'. If he'd hed any kind of a boss, an' hed
be'n trained on the Kennebec, he'd 'a' made a turrible smart driver, Steve
would."

"He'll be drownded, that's what'll become o' him, prophesied Mrs. Wiley;
"specially if Rose encourages him in such silly foolishness as ridin' logs
from his house down to ourn, dark nights."

"Seein' as how Steve built ye a nice pigpen last month, 'pears to me you might
have a good word for him now an' then, mother," remarked Old Kennebec,
reaching for his second piece of pie.

"I wa'n't a mite deceived by that pigpen, no more'n I was by Jed Towle's
hencoop, nor Ivory Dunn's well-curb, nor Pitt Packard's shed-steps. If you hed
ever kep' up your buildin's yourself, Rose's beaux would n't hev to do their
courtin' with carpenters' tools."