“Now, Henry,” said Mrs. Daggett, as she smilingly set a plate of perfectly browned pancakes before her husband, which he proceeded to deluge with butter and maple syrup, “are you sure that’s _so_, about the furniture? ’Cause if it is, we’ve got two or three o’ them things right in this house: that chair you’re settin’ in, for one, an’ upstairs there’s that ol’ fashioned brown bureau, where I keep the sheets ’n’ pillow slips. You don’t s’pose she’d want that, do you?” Mrs. Daggett sank down in a chair opposite her husband, her large pink and white face damp with moisture. Above her forehead a mist of airy curls fluttered in the warm breeze from the open window. “My, ain’t it hot!” she sighed. “I got all het up a-bakin’ them cakes. Shall I fry you another griddleful, papa?” “They cer’nly do taste kind o’ moreish, Abby,” conceded Mr. Daggett thickly. “You do beat the Dutch, Abby, when it comes t’ pancakes. Mebbe I could manage a few more of ’em.” Mrs. Daggett beamed sincerest satisfaction. “Oh, I don’t know,” she deprecated happily. “Ann Whittle says I don’t mix batter the way she does. But if _you_ like ’em, Henry—” “Couldn’t be beat, Abby,” affirmed Mr. Daggett sturdily, as he reached for his third cup of coffee. The cook stove was only a few steps away, so the sizzle of the batter as it expanded into generous disks on the smoking griddle did not interrupt the conversation. Mrs. Daggett, in her blue and white striped gingham, a pancake turner in one plump hand, smiled through the odorous blue haze like a tutelary goddess. Mr. Daggett, in his shirt-sleeves, his scant locks brushed carefully over his bald spot, gazed at her with placid satisfaction. He was thoroughly accustomed to having Abby wait upon his appetite. “I got to get down to the store kind of early this morning, Abby,” he observed, frowning slightly at his empty plate. “I’ll have ’em for you in two shakes of a lamb’s tail, papa,” soothed Mrs. Daggett, to whom the above remark had come to signify not merely a statement of fact, but a gentle reprimand. “I know you like ’em good and hot; and cold buckwheat cakes certainly is about th’ meanest vict’als.... There!” And she transferred a neat pile of the delicate, crisp rounds from the griddle to her husband’s plate with a skill born of long practice. “About that furnitur’,” remarked Mr. Daggett, gazing thoughtfully at the golden stream of sweetness, stolen from leaf and branch of the big sugar maples behind the house to supply the pewter syrup-jug he suspended above his cakes, “I guess it’s a fact she wants it, all right.” “I should think she’d rather have new furniture; Henry, they do say the house is going to be handsome. But you say she wants the old stuff? Ain’t that queer, for anybody with means.” “Well, that Orr girl beats me,” Mr. Daggett acknowledged handsomely. “She seems kind of soft an’ easy, when you talk to her; but she’s got ideas of her own; an’ you can’t no more talk ’em out of her—”