“Very well,” she answered; “but it’s my opinion, Asaph, that you ought not to take more than one minute to think about it. However, I will give you until to-morrow morning, and then if you decide that you don’t care to look like a respectable citizen, I must have some further talk with you about our future arrangements.”
“Make it to-morrow night,” said Asaph. And his sister consented.
The next day Asaph was unusually brisk and active; and very soon after breakfast he walked over to the village tavern to see Mr. Rooper.
“Hello!” exclaimed that individual, surprised at his visitor’s early appearance at the business centre of the village. “What’s started you out? Have you come after them clothes?”
A happy thought struck Asaph. He had made this visit with the intention of feeling his way toward some decision on the important subject of his sister’s proposition, and here a way seemed to be opened to him. “Thomas,” said he, taking his friend aside, “I am in an awful fix. Marietta can’t stand my clothes any longer. If she can’t stand them she can’t stand me, and when it comes to that, you can see for yourself that I can’t help you.”
A shade settled upon Mr. Rooper’s face. During the past evening he had been thinking and puffing, and puffing and thinking, until everybody else in the tavern had gone to bed; and he had finally made up his mind that, if he could do it, he would marry Marietta Himes. He had never been very intimate with her or her husband, but he had been to meals in the house, and he remembered the fragrant coffee and the light, puffy, well-baked rolls made by Marietta’s own hands; and he thought of the many differences between living in that very good house with that gentle, pleasant-voiced lady and his present life in the village tavern.
And so, having determined that without delay he would, with the advice and assistance of Asaph, begin his courtship, it was natural that he should feel a shock of discouragement when he heard Asaph’s announcement that his sister could not endure him in the house any longer. To attack that house and its owner without the friendly offices upon which he depended was an undertaking for which he was not at all prepared.
“I don’t wonder at her,” he said, sharply—“not a bit. But this puts a mighty different face on the thing what we talked about yesterday.”
“It needn’t,” said Asaph, quietly. “The clothes you was goin’ to give me wouldn’t cost a cent more to-day than they would in a couple of months, say; and when I’ve got ’em on Marietta will be glad to have me around. Everything can go on just as we bargained for.”
Thomas shook his head. “That would be a mighty resky piece of business,” he said. “You would be all right, but that’s not sayin’ that I would; for it strikes me that your sister is about as much a bird in the bush as any flyin’ critter.”