“You hain’t—heh? Well, you’re kind o’ behind the times.”
“I heerd the’ was to be two weddin’s out your way come fall,” cackled the horse doctor. “How ’bout Marthy an’ th’ onions?”
Peg turned an angrily bewildered face upon the speaker.
“Th’ onions,” he said, “is O. K.; but I dunno what you’re drivin’ at.”
“Well, I’ll tell ye; Marthy Cottle told Elviry Scott, an’ she tol’ my wife’s sister that you was payin’ her marked attention. She said she hadn’t made up her mind whether t’ marry ye or not. But she thought mebbe she might, ef the onion crop turned out all right. I sez t’ m’ wife——”
A roar of laughter drowned the end of the sentence and Peg’s indignant denial.
“I ain’t done no more,” he averred, “than t’ wipe m’ feet careful on th’ door-mat on the kitchen-stoop when the’s mud on the groun’. An’ I only done that t’ keep th’ peace.”
“Wall, Peleg, ef you c’n make out t’ keep th’ peace with Marthy Cottle, I reckon you’re the man fer Marthy,” was the opinion of the senior Hewett, delivered over the top of a tall bag of sugar which he was weighing.
A chorus of loud laughter greeted this sally; when it had died away a late comer announced impersonally that the county fair was going to be the finest in years.
“That’s so,” confirmed a visitor from the county seat, distant some five miles. “The’ll be horses f’om all over the state, ’n a b’lloon ascension, b’sides the usual features.”