“Well, well!” he sighed.

And would he go with us?

312

“I been waitin’ for you, Dannie,” says he. “I been sittin’ here in the kitchen––waitin’.”

’Twas a hopeful word.

“If mother was here,” he continued, “she’d have ’lowed I’d better wait. ‘You wait for Dannie,’ mother would have ’lowed, ‘until he comes.’ An’ so I been waitin’.”

Well, there I was.

“That was on’y mother,” he added; “an’, o’ course, I’m married now.”

Walrus Liz of the Labrador came in. I rose––and was pleasantly greeted. She sat, then, and effaced herself.

“Mrs. Moses Shoos,” says Moses, with a fond look upon that woman of ill-favor and infinite tenderness, “haves jus’ got t’ be consulted.”