“Hum! Well, I’ll help you believe it—that is, if I have time afore I drop dead of heart disease. Abbie, you’d make a good lawyer; you can get up an argument out of a perfect agreement. I said the thirty dollars was lost, to begin with. But I knew Tim Foster’s mother when she used to think that boy of hers was the eighth wonder of the world. And I promised her I’d do what I could for him long’s I lived.... But it seems to me we’ve drifted some off the course, ain’t we? What I started to say was that every time I go away from home I get into trouble. Up to Boston ’twas Tim and his ‘loan.’ To-night it’s about as healthy a sou’-wester as I’ve ever been out in. Dan fetched in the team, has he?”
“Yes. It’s in the stable. He says the buggy dash is pretty well scratched up, and that it’s a wonder you and that Graves man wa’n’t killed. Who is he, anyhow?”
“Land knows, I don’t.”
“You don’t know! Then what’s he doin’ here?”
“Changin’ his duds, I guess. That’s what I’d do if I looked as much like a drowned rat as he did.”
“’Lisha Warren! if you ain’t the most provokin’ thing! Don’t be so unlikely. You know what I mean. What’s he come here, to this house, for?”
“Don’t know, Abbie. I didn’t know he was comin’ here till just as we got down yonder by Emery’s corner. I asked him who he was lookin’ for, he said ‘Elisha Warren,’ and then the tree caved in on us.”
“’Lisha, you—you don’t s’pose ’twas a—sign, do you?”
“Sign?”
“Yes, a sign, a prophecy-like, a warnin’ that somethin’ is goin’ to happen.”