"Seems to me you're all gossiping pretty freely this morning. The young man may be pretty well fixed some day. But he's young, he's young. Mrs. Whately's my partner, and I know their affairs very well, very well. She'll provide her daughter with a man, not a mere boy."
"Well, he was man enough to keep this here town from burnin' up, an' no tellin' how many bloodsheds," Grandpa Mead piped in.
"He was man enough to find O'mie and save his life," Cam protested.
"Well, we'll leave it to Dr. Hemingway," Judson declared, as the good doctor entered the doorway. Judson paid liberally into the church fund and accounted that his wishes should weigh much with the good minister. "We—these people here—were just coupling the name of Marjory Whately with that boy of Judge Baronet's. Now I know how Mrs. Whately is circumstanced. She is peculiarly situated, and it seems foolish to even repeat such gossip about this young man, this very young man, Philip."
The minister smiled upon the group serenely. He knew the life-purpose of every member of it, and he could have said, as Kipling wrote of the Hindoo people:
I have eaten your bread and salt,
I have drunk your water and wine;
The deaths ye died I have watched beside,
And the lives ye led were mine.
"I never saw a finer young man and woman in my life," he said gently. "I know nothing of their intentions—as yet. They haven't been to me," his eyes twinkled, "but they are good to look upon when they stand up together. Our opinions, however, will cut little figure in their affairs. Heaven bless them and all the boys and girls! How soon they grow to be men and women."
The good man made his purchase and left the store.
"But he's a young man, a very boy yet," Amos Judson insisted, unable to hide his disappointment at the minister's answer.
The very boy himself walked in at that instant. Judson turned a scowling face at O'mie, who was chuckling among the calicoes, and frowned upon the group as if to ward off any further talk. I nodded good-morning and went to O'mie.