“It’s a sugar plum for Mr. Martin because you were bad to him, isn’t it?”
“Yes, Lanty’s had his——”
Mabella blushed, and an irrepressible ripple of laughter broke from her.
“Well, you needn’t laugh,” said Temperance. “Mr. Martin thinks Vashti’s just about right. Well, there’s no accountin’ for taste. ‘Everyone to their taste,’ as the old woman said when she kissed her cow.”
“Temperance!” said Mabella, “you don’t mean——”
Temperance nodded oracularly, “Nathan thinks so too.”
“Well!” said Mabella, and relapsed into silence. Here was news for Lanty. If Nathan and Temperance thought so it must be so. A fellow feeling not only makes us kind but often very acute; and in all Dole there were no such keen eyes for any “goin’s on” (as courtship was disrespectfully designated) as those of Temperance and Nathan.
“Love, it is a funny thing;
It puzzles the young and the old;
It’s much like a dish of boarding-house hash,