The words seemed to be echoing from the stolen conversation too warmly alive in her memory. He, too, she thought, was probably considering her a nice proper-looking woman, but one no man would think of marrying. "Take a chair," she said, and the cap'n went over to the hearth where a careful fire was laid. "Goin' to touch it off?" he inquired. Mariana, with a jealous eye, noted that he was looking at the fire, not at her. She wondered if Lizzie Ann West would say a man had to be warmed as well as fed. "Touch it off," she said, with a disproportioned recklessness. "There's the matches on the mantel-tree." The cap'n did it, kneeling to adjust the sticks more nicely; and when one fell forward with the burning of the kindling, lifted it and laid it back solicitously. Then with a turkey-wing he swept up the hearth, its specklessness invaded by a rolling bit of coal, put the wing in place, and stood looking down at what seemed to be his own handiwork. "There!" said he. He took the big armchair by the hearth, and Mariana drew her little rocker to the other corner. She seated herself in it, her hands rather tensely folded, and the cap'n regarded her mildly. "Ain't you goin' to sew?" he inquired. "Why, no," said Mariana, "I dunno 's I be. I dunno 's I feel like sewin' all the time." "Well, I dunno 's there's any law to make a woman set an' sew," the cap'n ruminated. "Sewin' or knittin', either. Only, I've got so used to seein' you with a piece o' work in your hands, didn't look hardly nat'ral not to." He regarded her again with his kindly stare. "Mariana," said he, "you look like a different creatur'. What is 't's got hold of you?" "Nothin', I guess," said Mariana. "Maybe I'm mad." "Mad? What ye mad about?" "Oh, I dunno. I guess I'm just mad in general. Nothin' particular, as I see." "Well, if anybody's goin' to be mad it ought to be me," said the cap'n, lifting his brows with that droll look he wore when he intended to indicate that he was fooling. "I guess I've got to wash my own dishes an' bake my own johnny-cake for a spell. Mandy's goin' to leave." "Mandy goin' to leave! Well, you will be put to 't. What's she leavin' for?" "Goin' to be married." "For mercy sakes! Who's Mandy Hill goin' to marry?" "Goin' to marry the peddler." "The one from the Pines?" Cap'n Hanscom nodded. "He's been round consid'able this fall, but I never so much as thought he'd got anything but carpet-rags in his head. Well, seems he had. Now 't I know it, I realize Mandy's been stockin' up with tin for quite a spell. Seems to me I never see a woman that needed so much tinware, nor took so long to pick it out. I never got it through my noddle she an' the peddler was makin' on 't up between 'em." "Well, suz," said Mariana. "I never so much as thought Mandy Hill'd ever marry."