“Young men don’t always have to tell such things, to make ’em known,” suggested the farmer. “Pooty much everybody knowed when _I_ was fust gone on you, though I didn’t say nothin’ to nobody, not even to the gal herself.” “If it’s so,” said Mrs. Hayn, after another short pause, “mebbe it explains why he hain’t writ. He’d want to tell us ’fore anybody else, an’ he feels kind o’ bashful like.” “You’ve got a good mem’ry, Lou Ann,” said the old farmer, rising, and pinching his wife’s ear. “What do you mean, Reuben?” “Oh, nothin’, ’xcept that you hain’t forgot the symptoms,--that’s all.” “Sho!” exclaimed the old lady, giving her husband a push, though not so far but that she was leaning on his shoulder a moment later. “‘Twould be kind o’ funny if that thing was to work, though, wouldn’t it?” she continued; “that is, if Sol’s right.” “Well,” replied her husband, with a sudden accession of earnestness in his voice, “if Sol’s right, ’twon’t be a bit funny if it _don’t_ work. I hope the blessed boy’s got as much good stuff in him as I’ve always counted on. The bigger the heart, the wuss it hurts when it gets hit; an’ there’s a mighty big heart in any child of you an’ me, though I say it as mebbe I shouldn’t.” “_That_ boy ain’t never goin’ to have no heart-aches,--not on account o’ gals,” said the mother, whose voice also showed a sudden increase of earnestness. “I don’t b’lieve the gal was ever made that could say no to a splendid young feller like that,--a young feller that’s han’some an’ good an’ bright an’ full o’ fun, an’ that can tell more with his eyes in a minute than a hull sittin’-room-full of ord’nary young men can say with their tongues in a week.” “No,” said the old man, soberly, “not if the gal stayed true to the pattern she was made on,--like you did, for instance. But gals is only human,--ther’ wouldn’t be no way of keepin’ ’em on earth if they wasn’t, you know,--an’ sometimes they don’t do ’xactly what might be expected of ’em.” “That Tramlay gal won’t give _him_ the mitten, anyhow,” persisted Mrs. Hayn. “Mebbe she ain’t as smart as some, but that family, through an’ through, has got sense enough to know what’s worth havin’ when they see it. She needn’t ever expect to come back here to board for the summer, if she cuts up any such foolish dido as that.” “Lou Ann,” said the farmer, solemnly, “do you reely think it over an’ above likely that she’d _want_ to come back, in such case made an’ pervided?” Then both old people laughed, and went into the house, and talked of all sorts of things that bore no relation whatever to youth or love or New York. They retired early, after the manner of farm-people in general, after a prayer containing a formal and somewhat indefinite petition for the absent one. The old lady lay awake for hours, it seemed to her, her head as full of rosy dreams as if it were not covered with snow; yet when at last she was dropping asleep she was startled by hearing her husband whisper,--