"Yes, darlin', I've come, an' I'll never——" The words died upon his lips, for something in the face upon his breast told him that Molly was listening to another voice than his.
A SUMMER'S DIVERSION.
"For one, I don't trust them yaller-haired, smooth-spoke women! I never see one on 'em yet that wa'n't full o' Satan."
It was Mrs. Rhoda Squires who uttered the above words; and she uttered them with considerable unnecessary clatter of the dishes she was engaged in washing. Abby Ann, a lank, dyspeptic-looking girl of fifteen or sixteen, was wiping the same, while the farmer himself was putting the finishing touches to his evening toilet. That toilet consisted, as usual, of a good wash at the pump, the turning down of his shirt-sleeves, and a brief application of the family comb, which occupied a convenient wall-pocket at one side of the small kitchen mirror—after which the worthy farmer considered himself in full dress, and ready for any social emergency likely to occur at Higgins' Four Corners.
"No," said Abby Ann, in response to her mother's remark, "she ain't no beauty, but her clo'es does fit elegant. I wish I hed the pattern o' that white polonay o' hern, but I wouldn't ask her for it—no, not to save her!" she added, in praiseworthy emulation of the maternal spirit.
"Oh, you women folks!" interposed the farmer. "You're as full of envy 'n' backbitin' as a beechnut's full o' meat. Beauty! Ye don't know what beauty means. I tell you she is a beauty,—a real high-steppin' out-an'-out beauty!"
"She's as old as I be, every bit!" snapped Mrs. Squires. "An' she hain't got a speck o' color in her cheeks—an' she's a widder at that!"
Farmer Squires turned slowly around and deliberately surveyed the wiry, stooping figure of his wife from the small, rusty "pug" which adorned the back of her aggressive little head, and the sharp, energetically moving elbows, down to the hem of her stiffly starched calico gown.