Long Snapps had been, in his own phrase, "weather-bound" at Westbury, and was there still, safe in the chimney-corner, his shrewd face puckered with thought and care, his steady old heart full of resolute bravery, and longing for the time to come; flint and steel ready to strike fire on the slightest collision. On the other side of the hearth from Snapps sat Zekle in his butternut-colored Sunday suit; the four young men ranged in a grim row of high-backed wooden chairs; Sally, blooming as the roses on her chintz gown, occupying one end of the settle, while Aunt Poll filled the rest of that institution with her ample quilted petticoat and paduasoy cloak, trying hard to keep her hands still, in their unaccustomed idleness,—nay, if it must be told, surreptitiously keeping up a knitting with the fingers, in lieu of the accustomed needles and yarn.
An awful silence reigned after the preliminary bows and scrapes had been achieved,—first broken by George Tucker, who drew from under his chair a small basket of red-cheeked apples and handed them to Aunt Poll.
"Well, now, George Tucker!" exclaimed the benign spinster, "you dew beat all for sass out o' season! Kep 'em down sullar, I expect?"
"Yes'm, our sullar's very dry."
"Well, it hed oughter. What kind be they?"
"English pippins, ma'am."
"Dew tell! be you a-goin to hev one, Sally?"
"No, Aunt Poll! I don't want any thin' English 'round!"
The three young men grinned and chuckled. George Tucker turned red.
"Hooray for you, Sally!" sung out old Snapps. "You're a three-decker, ef ever there was 'un!"