The word that Lizzie Graham--"poor as Job's turkey!"--was going to
marry Nathaniel May spread like grass fire through Jonesville. Mrs.
Butterfield preserved a cold silence, for her distress was great. To
hear people snicker and say that Lizzie Graham must be "dyin' anxious
to get married"; that she must be "lottin' considerable on a good
ghost-market"; that she "took a new way o' gettin' a hired man without
payin' no wages,"--these things stung her sore heart into actual anger
at the friend she loved. But she did not show it.

"Mis' Graham probably knows her own business," she said, stiffly, to
any one who spoke to her of the matter. Even to her own husband she
was non-committal. Josh sat out by the kitchen door, tilting back
against the gray-shingled side of the house, his hands in his pockets,
his feet tucked under him on the rung of his chair. He was in his
shirt-sleeves, and he had unbuttoned his baggy old waistcoat, for it
was a hot night. Mrs. Butterfield was on the kitchen door-step. They
could look across a patch of grass at the great barn, connected with
the little house by a shed. Its doors were still open, and Josh could
see the hay, put in that afternoon. The rick in the yard stood like a
skeleton against the fading yellow of the sky; some fowls were
roosting comfortably on the tongue. It was very peaceful; but Mrs.
Butterfield's face was puckered with anxiety. "Yet I don't know as I
can do anything about it," she said, her foot tapping the stone step
nervously; "she ain't got no call to be so foolish."

"Well," Josh said, removing his pipe from his lips and spitting
thoughtfully, "seems Mis' Graham's bound to get some kind of a
husband!" Then he chuckled, and thrust his pipe back under his long,
shaven upper lip.