“A good deal,” said Asaph. “If you get Marietta with her fifteen hundred a year—and it wouldn’t surprise me if it was eighteen hundred—and her house and her garden and her cattle and her field and her furniture, with not a leg loose nor a scratch, you will get her because I proposed her to you, and because I backed you up afterward. And now, then, I want to know what you are goin’ to do for me?”
“What do you want?” asked Thomas.
“The first thing I want,” said Asaph, “is a suit of clothes. These clothes is disgraceful.”
“You are right there,” said Mr. Rooper. “I wonder your sister lets you come around in front of the house. But what do you mean by clothes—winter clothes or summer clothes?”
“Winter,” said Asaph, without hesitation. “I don’t count summer clothes. And when I say a suit of clothes, I mean shoes and hat and underclothes.”
Mr. Rooper gave a sniff. “I wonder you don’t say overcoat,” he remarked.
“I do say overcoat,” replied Asaph. “A suit of winter clothes is a suit of clothes that you can go out into the weather in without missin’ nothin’.”
Mr. Rooper smiled sarcastically. “Is there anything else you want?” he asked.
“Yes,” said Asaph, decidedly; “there is. I want a umbrella.”
“Cotton or silk?”