"Do you want me to choose a new dress for Molly? I suppose that is what you mean."
"Molly! oh dear, no! nothing of the kind, Miss Queenie dear. The fact is, a young friend of mine, is—hem—is, in short, going to be married, that is, she is going to be married some day, no doubt."
"Indeed! a friend of yours, do you say?" Caleb nodded still more mysteriously.
"The circumstances are peculiar; yes, I am certainly right in saying they are peculiar," continued Caleb, reflecting; "but she—that is, he—has commissioned me to get her some things suitable to a lady in such a position, as the same peculiar circumstances prevent her from choosing the articles herself. She is not going to be married yet," rubbing his head with a little vexed perplexity; "but she is going on a visit to his friends, and he—the young man I mean. Ah! that's it," with a chuckle, as though he had discovered a way out of some difficulty—"he, the young man, my dear, has a proper pride, and wants her to make a favourable impression on his relations; do you see, Miss Queenie."
"Is she so very poor?" returned Queenie, innocently, and not at all suspecting the veracity of Caleb's garbled-up tale.
"Poor! well I may say that she is poor—extremely so," with a burst of candor; "but a lady,—dear, dear,—as much a lady as yourself, Miss Queenie."
"I should have thought her lover could have chosen some pretty things for her himself," observed Queenie, a little incredulously, at this juncture. "He must be a poor sort of lover," she thought, "to devolve such an interesting duty on her old friend."
Caleb coughed, and stopped to inspect a promising gooseberry bush; and then he discovered his pipe was out, and must replenish it; it was quite five minutes, too, before it would draw properly, and Queenie got impatient for her question to be answered.
"Why cannot he get them himself?" she enquired, a little scornfully; "he need not have troubled you."
"Well, you see, a man with a broken leg is not particularly active, and shopping does not suit the complaint," was the oracular answer, as Caleb puffed volumes of smoke, bravely. "No, no, that sort of thing is not good for the complaint," continued the old man, with another chuckle; "so you see, Miss Queenie dear, if you don't help me a bit with your advice I shall have to go to Molly after all, and shall come back with a plaid satin, or something that wouldn't suit the pretty creature at all. Come, now,"—coaxingly,—"what should you think she would like best?"