Rob and Nelly had listened silently with wide-open eyes and ears to this conversation; but at this last statement Rob's curiosity got the better of him.
"What is baching it?" said he, as they drove off.
The man laughed.
"Ask your father: he'll tell you," he said.
"What is it, papa?" said Rob.
"I suppose it is for a man to live all alone, without any wife. You know they call unmarried men 'old bachelors,' after they get to be thirty or thirty-five. But I never heard the word before."
"Oh!" said Rob; "is that all? I thought 'twas a trade he had,—or something he sold or made."
"Well," said the Deacon; "any man that could live up here in this stone gully, without his wife along, I don't think much of. It's the lonesomest place, for an out-doors place, that ever I saw."
"Oh, I think it's splendid!" said Rob.
"So do I," said Nelly. "It's perfectly beautiful!"