commented old Mrs. Bascom, "but no new wash-boiler has gone
into Rube Hobson's door in the daytime for many a year,
and I'll be bound it means somethin'. There goes a broom, too.
Much sweepin' he'll get out o' Eunice; it's a slick 'n'
a promise with her!"

"When did you begin to suspicion this, Diademy?" asked Almira Berry.
"I've got as much faculty as the next one, but anybody that lives on the river
road has just got to give up knowin' anything. You can't keep runnin'
to the store every day, and if you could you don't find out much nowadays.
Bill Peters don't take no more interest in his neighbors than a cow
does in election."

"I can't get mother Bascom to see it as I do," said Diadema,
"but for one thing she's ben carryin' home bundles 'bout every
other night for a month, though she's ben too smart to buy anythin'
here at this store. She had Packard's horse to go to Saco last week.
When she got home, jest at dusk, she drove int' the barn,
'n' bimeby Pitt Packard come to git his horse,--'t was her own
buggy she went with. She looked over here when she went int'
the house, 'n' she ketched my eye, though 't was half a mile away,
so she never took a thing in with her, but soon as't was dark she made
three trips out to the barn with a lantern, 'n' any fool could tell
't her arms was full o' pa'cels by the way she carried the lantern.
The Hobsons and the Emerys have married one another more 'n once,
as fur as that goes. I declare if I was goin' to get married I
should want to be relation to somebody besides my own folks."

"The reason I can hardly credit it," said Hannah Sophia,
"is because Eunice never had a beau in her life, that I can