"That Brandenburg left his chicken plant just as it was. The end shed is tight and has a good stove in it and a bunk. He watched his incubators there. You get some bedclothes and some cooking utensils and you'll be fixed right," said Battick.
"Anything rather than give me up to the teeth and claws of Miss Pringle, is it?" asked Hiram, with a quiet chuckle.
"No laughing matter, young fellow," advised Battick, as the visitor prepared to depart. "I'll bet you she'll be over to see you before you are at Sunnyside twenty-four hours—unless she has a broken leg. Oh, I know her, Mr. Strong. I pretty near had to run her off this place with my gun."
"I hope not, Mr. Battick."
"Fact," said the man in a perfectly serious way. "As I tell you, this was the old Pringle place. She claimed she liked to come down here for old time's sake and sit under that buttonwood tree out there. She'd bring her sewing and stay all the afternoon and I had to dress up and make believe I was going to town to get rid of her."
"That was a good deal of a time-consumer," interrupted Hiram, his eyes dancing with his inward mirth.
"Then," pursued the harassed man, "folks riding by began to ask me if we were going to be married soon and whether I'd continue to live down here or go up to Miss Pringle's new house to live with her. It got right embarrassing for a modest man, for a fact!
"Besides," added Battick, "I didn't know but she was aiming to get me into court for breach of promise. Circumstantial evidence has hung many a man."
"I hope I shall have no similar trouble," Hiram replied, vastly amused.
He believed Battick, in spite of all his moodiness, and his fear of rats—and dislike for visitors—was a wit and worth cultivating. At least, he determined to learn more about that new wheat that the man was guarding so religiously.