“An’ it’s all on account of a gal,” farmer Hayn would remark to his wife whenever he heard of any new movement that could be traced to the ease of the local money market. “If our Phil hadn’t got that Tramlay gal on the brain last summer, he wouldn’t have gone to New York to visit; then I wouldn’t have gone to look for him, and the Improvement Company wouldn’t have been got up, an’ Phil wouldn’t have hatched the brilliant idee of buyin’--what did he call ’em?--oh, yes; options--buyin’ options on the rest of the ridge, an’ there would have been no refreshin’ shower of greenbacks fallin’ like the rain from heaven on the just an’ unjust alike. It reminds me of the muss that folks got into in the old country over that woman Helen, whose last name I never could find out. You remember it?--’twas in the book that young minister we had on trial, an’ didn’t exactly like, left at our house. It’s just another such case, only a good deal more proper, this not bein’ a heathen land. All on account of a gal!” “If it is,” Mrs. Hayn replied on one occasion, as she took her hands from the dough she was kneading, “an’ it certainly looks as if it was, don’t you think it might be only fair to allude to her more respectful? I don’t like to hear a young woman that our Phil’s likely to marry spoke of as just ‘that Tramlay gal.’” “S’pose, then, I mention her as your daughter-in-law? But ain’t it odd that all the changes that’s come to pass in the last month or two wouldn’t have happened at all if it hadn’t been for Phil’s bein’ smitten by that gal? As the Scripture says, ‘Behold how great a matter a little fire kindleth.’ For ‘fire’ read ‘spark,’ or sparkin’, an’ the text----” “Reuben!” exclaimed Mrs. Hayn, “don’t take liberties with the Word.” “It ain’t no liberty,” said the old man. “Like enough it’ll read ‘spark’ in the Revised Edition.” “Then wait till it does, or until you’re one of the revisers,” said the wife. “All right; mebbe it would be as well,” the husband admitted. “Meanwhile, I don’t mind turnin’ it off an’ comparin’ it with another text: ‘The wind bloweth where it listeth, but thou canst not tell whence it cometh or whither it goeth.’ The startin’ up of Haynton an’ of Phil’s attachment is a good deal like----” “I don’t know that that’s exactly reverent, either,” said Mrs. Hayn, “considerin’ what follers in the Book. An’ what’s goin’ on in the neighborhood don’t interest me as much as what’s goin’ on in my own family. I’d like to know when things is comin’ to a head. Phil ain’t married, nor even engaged, that we know of; there ain’t no lots bein’ sold by the company, or if there are we don’t hear about it.” “An’ there’s never any bread bein’ baked while you’re kneadin’ the dough, old lady. You remember the passage, ‘first the blade, then the ear, then the full corn in the ear’? Mustn’t look for fruit in blossomin’-time: even Jesus didn’t find that when he looked for it on a fig-tree ahead of time, you know.”