"I'll call you in when your wife comes; but if you don't want her to smell a rat, you'd better shut the front shutters. There's already been people hangin' on the fence, lookin' at them lace fixin's in the winders, an' women are powerful observin'. An' say, here's a new tea-kettle, full of water; better set it on the kitchen stove. Pianners are splendid,—I never would have believed there could be anythin' like 'em,—but the singin' of a tea-kettle's got a powerful grip on most women's ears. I didn't see no ev'ryday dishes among your things. Don't you want some?"
Philip thought he did not, and he hurried to the house. He was soon summoned to the store, and through the coming darkness of the sunset hour he saw at the back door his wife, who said:—
"Oh, Phil! Mrs. Taggess is the dearest woman! We were of the same age before I'd been with her an hour."
"Eh? You don't look a moment older."
"But she looked twenty years younger. When she's animated, she—oh, I never saw such a complexion."
"Not even in your mirror?"
"No, you silly dear! And her home is real cosey. There's nothing showy or expensive in it; but if ever I get homesick, I'm going to hurry up there, even if the mud is a foot deep."
"Good! Perhaps you got some ideas of how to fix up our own dismal barn of a house. Come down and look about it once more."
Together they started. As they reached the front door, and Philip threw it open, Caleb, with his eye at the back window of the store, saw Grace stop and toss up her hands. As the door closed, Caleb jumped up and down, and afterward said to himself:—
"There are times when I wish, church or no church, that I'd learned how to dance."