"I war sorter waitin' fur Jasper," observed Espey disingenuously, having noticed that Mrs. Larrabee looked inquiringly at him. "I reckon he be a-visitin' down at Tems's." "Mebbe so," she acquiesced succinctly, rasping the shovel on the hearth. She seemed indisposed for conversation. "Mis' Haight's mighty good comp'ny," he continued, leaning sideways in his chair, with his elbow on its back as he supported his head in his hand. "Talkin' 'bout old times, an' her courtin' days, an' sech." For, according to Mrs. Haight's own account, she had been a truculent heart-breaker in her hey-day. There were few names that one might mention, native to her locality, which she could not have worn had she chosen. She always alluded cavalierly to the husband she had and to the one she had lost as "toler'ble samples o' the whole b'ilin'." Mrs. Larrabee's immobile face was more inexpressive than before, as the red light sought it out in the depths of her sunbonnet. She had her secret doubts as to this wholesale destruction of the peace of youth a half century ago. "Toler'ble interestin' ter me!" protested Espey suddenly. "I hev been sorter in love myse'f--leastwise"--He did not continue to qualify, for Mrs. Larrabee turned her face, illumined by maternal interest, upon him. "It's gin me a heap o' trouble, too," he broke out impetuously, divining her sympathy. She was looking at him tenderly, remembering her own youth and her own young lover, dead and gone this many a year. Jacob Larrabee had, in happier days, laughed retrospectively at his own lackadaisical woe and wakeful nights and anxious doubts. "Sech a _funny_ fool I war. Thar may hev been ez _big_ fools, but I'll swar I war the _funniest_." But his woe had always appealed to her commiseration, and she was glad she had consciously been no factor in it. "I wouldn't hev hed ye so tormented fur nuthin', Jacob, ef I hed knowed," she would say gently. Jack's young face, worn with fiercer griefs and turmoils and keener fears, was appealing in its anxious lines; her warm motherly heart went out to him. He leaned his hands on his knees, and assumed a confidential tone. "Now, Mis' Lar'bee," he said, "I 'lowed I'd ax ye what this hyar gal means. I hev done everything I knowed how ter please her,--even whenst she tole me ter go a-perlitin' around another gal. I done _jes' like she ordered_, an' what ye s'pose she done?" "What?" demanded his partisan confidante angrily, knitting her brows heavily. "She hit me." "Did she hurt ye?" exclaimed Mrs. Larrabee sympathetically, dropping her voice in contemplation of the enormity. Remembering the relative proportions and force of Adelicia and himself, Espey and his woe were out of countenance for the nonce. He laughed a little sheepishly. "Naw," he admitted reluctantly. "She didn't hurt me none ter speak on." Mrs. Larrabee's brow cleared. "Sonny, 'twar jes' love-licks," she suggested, in old-fashioned maternal phrase.