"Now, what could a body be about when he’s wetting a passle of shucks?" he answered, dryly. "I’m going to make me some stout horse-collars for spring ploughing. There ain’t but one other thing a body could make out of wet shucks, and that’s foot-mats for town folks to wipe their feet on. Foot-mats are a dead waste of money, for if fewer mats was used, women would have to do more sweeping and not get time to stand around the post-office watching men as much as they do. I reckon it’s the way old daddy Time has of shifting women’s work onto men’s shoulders. I’ll bet my hat that new-fangled churn that fellow passed with yesterday was invented by a man out o’ pure pity for his sex." "I was wondering where Virginia went to," Jane said, as if she had not heard his philosophical utterances. "I’ve been all round the house looking for her, even to the barn, but she’s disappeared entirely." Sam shrugged his shoulders significantly. He placed the last stone on the submerged husks and drew himself up erect. "I was just studying," he drawled out, "whether it ud actually do to tell you where she is at this minute. I’d decided I’d better not, and go on and finish this work. From what I know about your odd disposition, I’d expect one of two solitary things: I’d expect to see you keel over in a dead faint or stand stock-still in your tracks and burn to a cinder from internal fires." "Sam, what do you mean?" The widow, in no little alarm, came towards him, her eyes fixed steadily on his. "Well, I reckon you might as well know and be done with it," he said, "though you’ll be sure to let them pies burn afterwards. Jane, your only child is right now a-sitting on the bench at the gum spring, side by side with Ann Boyd. In fact, as well as I could see from the rise I was on in my potato-patch, I’d ’a’ took my oath that they was holding hands like two sweethearts." "I don’t believe a word of it," Jane gasped, turning pale. "It might have been Virginia with somebody else, but not _that_ woman." "I wouldn’t mistake Ann Boyd’s solid shape and blue linsey frock ten miles off," was the cold comfort Sam dispensed in his next remark. "If you doubt what I say, and will agree not to jump on Ann and get yourself drawed up at court for assault and battery, with intent to _get killed_, you may go look for yourself. If you’ll slip through the thicket, you can come up on ’em unbeknownst."