village picnic had found him at Diantha's door with his old mare and his
buggy, ready to be her devoted slave for the day. Nor was Diantha
unmindful of all these attentions. She ate the apples and the honey, and
spent long contented hours in the buggy; but she still answered his
pleadings with her gentle: "I hain't no call to marry yet, Phineas," and
nothing he could do seemed to hasten her decision in the least. It was
the mare and the buggy, however, that proved to be responsible for what
was the beginning of the end.

They were on their way home from the county fair. The mare, head
hanging, was plodding through the dust when around the curve of the road
ahead shot the one automobile that the town boasted. The next moment the
whizzing thing had passed, and left a superannuated old mare looming
through a cloud of dust and dancing on two wabbly hind legs.

"Plague take them autymobiles!" snarled Phineas through set teeth, as he
sawed at the reins. "I ax yer pardon, I'm sure, Dianthy," he added
shamefacedly, when the mare had dropped to a position more nearly
normal; "but I hain't no use fur them 'ere contraptions!"

Diantha frowned. She was frightened--and because she was frightened she
was angry. She said the first thing that came into her head--and never
had she spoken to Phineas so sharply.

"If you did have some use for 'em, Phineas Hopkins, you wouldn't be
crawlin' along in a shiftless old rig like this; you'd have one yourself
an' be somebody! For my part, I like 'em, an' I'm jest achin' ter ride
in 'em, too!"

Phineas almost dropped the reins in his amazement. "Achin' ter ride in