"Oh, Phil! Where are your wits? I'm going to have the organ kept at the church, and let the most promising would-be learners and possible buyers do their practising there. The organ firm sells on instalments; we'll guarantee the instalments, for I'll select the buyers--who will want only smaller instruments--from among women who bring us chickens and butter and eggs and feathers and such things. So the church will be sure of an instrument more appropriate to congregational singing than a piano, and our piano won't be coveted, and we will make a little money, and by the time the next revival season arrives there will be at least a few people who can play, and perhaps some who are accustomed to closed windows and stuffy air, and won't get splitting headaches and lose five pounds of weight in a week, as I did." "Allow me to catch my breath!" said Philip. "Give me some tea, please, quick!--no milk or sugar. I hope 'tis very strong. You've planned all this, yet there you sit, as natural and unassuming as if you'd never thought of anything but keeping house and being the sweetest wife in the world!" "Thank you, but shouldn't sweetness have any strength and character? And what is business for, I should like to know, but to enable women to keep house--and keep their pianos, if they have any?" "Caleb," said Philip, on returning to the store, "I want to apologize for answering you rudely this morning about that enraging piano. I was in a hard study over--" "Don't mention it," said Caleb, with a beatific smile. "Besides, 'Providence tempers the wind to the shorn lamb,' as the Bible says in hundreds of different ways. I s'pose your wife's told you what she's done about music for the church? Je--ru--salem! Ain't she a peeler, though?" "She is indeed--if I may assume that a 'peeler' is an incomparable combination of goodness and good sense." "That's about the meanin' of it, in my dictionary." Then Caleb fixed his eyes inquiringly upon Philip's face and kept them there so long that Philip asked:-- "What now, Caleb?" "Nothin'," said Caleb, suddenly looking embarrassed. "That is, nothin' that's any o' my business." "If 'twas mine, you needn't hesitate to mention it. You and I ought to be fair and frank with each other." "Well," said Caleb, counting with a stubby forefinger the inches on a yardstick, "I was only wonderin'--that is, I want to say that you're a good deal of a man, an' one that I'm satisfied it's safe to tie to, an' I'm mighty glad you're in your uncle's place, but--for the land's sake, how'd you come to git her?" Philip laughed heartily, and replied:-- "As most men get wives. I asked her to marry me. First, of course, I put my best foot forward, for a long time, and kept it there." "Of course. But didn't the other fellers try to cut you out?" "Quite likely, for most men have eyes." "Wa'n't any of 'em millionnaires?"