“Oh, there’s no doubt that he’s a gentleman. He is less loud, somehow, than Mr. Chester, though he hasn’t his charm. It seems there is the most wonderful boy friendship between them.”
“Where did you get all this insight into the social life of our employees?” asked Judge 23 Tiffany; and then, “Mattie, you’ve been exposing yourself to the night air again.”
“Over at their camp last evening,” said Mrs. Tiffany. “Well, and isn’t it my business to look after—after that side of the ranch?” she added.
The Judge had dropped the book now; his senses were alert to the game which never grew old to him—“Mattie-baiting” he had named it.
“Mattie,” he said, “with a pretty and marriageable, dowered and maiden niece on your hands, a new era is opening in your life of passionate self-sacrifice. It used to be orphan children and neglected wives of farm hands. Now it is presentable but neglected bachelors. Your darling match for Eleanor, I suppose, would be some young soul snatched from evil courses, pruned, trimmed, and delivered at the altar with ‘Made by Mattie Tiffany’ branded on his wings. Spare, O spare your innocent niece!”
“Edward, I never thought of it in that light!” cried Mrs. Tiffany; and she bent herself to furious crocheting. After a time, and when the Judge had resumed his book, she looked up and added: 24
“It might be worse, though, than a young man who had made it all himself.”
Judge Tiffany burst into laughter. Then, seeing her bend closer over her pink yarns, he grew grave, reached for the hand which held the needles, and kissed it.
That was her reward of childless matrimony, as the appreciation of her humors was his.