The doubt that Miss Sally had expressed regarding Pap Briggs' acceptance of Eliph' Hewlitt as a son-in-law was mild compared with the fact. When the old man returned the next day from his farm at Clarence and learned from Miss Sally that she had promised to marry the book agent he was furiously angry. For two whole days he refused to wear his store teeth at all, and when he recovered from his first height of anger it was to settle down into a hard and fast negative. He went about town telling anyone that would listen to him that there ought to be licenses against book agents, and once having made up his mind that Miss Sally should not marry Eliph' as long as he remained alive to prevent it, not even the friendly approaches of the book agent could move him from his stubborn resolution. Miss Sally would not think of marrying while her father was in such a state of opposition, and indeed, Eliph' did not urge it. He had no desire to defy his father-in-law, and he unwillingly but kindly agreed to wait. In this way the autumn faded into winter. Mrs. Tarbro-Smith returned to New York with a note-book full of dialect and a head full of local color and types, and if she took Susan with her it was only because she agreed to bring her back in June, when T. J. Jones was to marry her. Miss Sally lived on with her father, attending to his wants, which were few and simple. An egg for breakfast, and enough tobacco to burn all day were his chief earthly desires, eggs because he could eat them in comfort, and tobacco because he liked it. When Miss Sally had moved to town there was one thing she had said her father SHOULDN'T do, after living all his life on a farm, and that was, have store eggs for his breakfast. “Hens is trouble enough, Lord knows,” said Miss Sally, “an' dirty, if they can't be kep' in their place; but there's some comfort in their cluckin' round, and I guess I'll have plenty of time, and to spare to tend to 'em; so, Pap, you won't have to eat no stale eggs for breakfast, if I kin help it. They ain't nothing' I hate to think on like boughten eggs. Nobody knows how old they are, nor who's been a-handlin' them; and eat boughten eggs you shan't do, sure's my name's Briggs!” So Sally brought half a dozen hens and a gallant rooster to town with her, and supervised the erection of a cozy coop and hen-yard, and Pap had the comfort of knowing his eggs were fresh. But fresh or not, it made no difference to him so long as he had one each morning, and it was fairly edible. “These teeth o' mine,” he told Billings, the grocer, “cost twelve dollars down to Franklin, by the best dentist there; but, law sakes! A feller can't eat hard stuff with any comfort with 'em for fear of breakin' 'em every minute. They ain' nothin' but chiney, an' you know how chiney's the breakiest thing man ever made. That's why I say, 'Give me eggs for breakfast, Sally,'--and eggs I will have.”