But when Reuben Pett had looked around three or four times, she grasped her skirts in both hands and pushed them angrily down to their utmost length. Then, with a true woman’s dislike of outraging pretty dress material, she made a furtive experiment or two to see if her skirts would not answer all the purposes of modesty without hanging wrong. Perhaps she had a natural talent that way; at any rate, she found that they would. “Samantha,” said Reuben Pett, over his shoulder, “what under the sun sense be there in chasin’ them two young fools up? If they want to marry, why not let ’em marry? It’s natural for ’em to want to, and it’s agin nature to stop ’em. May be it wouldn’t be sech a bad marriage, after all. Now you look at it in the light of conscience--” “_You_’re a nice hand to be advocating marriage, Reuben Pett,” said Mrs. Spaulding; “you jest hurry up that horse and I’ll look out for the light of conscience.” Mr. Pett chirruped to the capering ewe-neck, and they jolted downward in silence for a half a mile. Then he said suddenly, as if emerging from a cloud of reflection: “I ain’t never said nothing agin marriage!” * * * * * Noon-time came, and the hot August sun poured down upon them, until the old calash felt, as Mr. Pett remarked, like a chariot of fire. This observation was evolved in a humorous way to slacken the tension of a situation which was becoming distinctly unpleasant. Moved by a spirit of genial and broadly human benevolence which was somewhat unnatural to him, Mr. Pett had insisted upon pleading the cause of the youthful runaways with an insistence that was at once indiscreet and futile. In the end his companion had ordered him to hold his tongue, an injunction he was quite incapable of obeying. After a series of failures in the way of conversational starters, he finally scored a success by suggesting that they should pause and partake of the meagre refection which Canada Pete had furnished them--a modest repast of doughnuts, apples and store-pie. This they ate at the first creek where they found a convenient place to water the horse. When they resumed their journey, they found that they were all refreshed and in brighter mood. Even the horse was intoxicated by the water and that form of verdure which may pass for grass on the margin of a mountain highway in Maine. This change of feeling was also perceptible in the manner and bearing of the human beings who made up the cavalcade. Samantha adjusted her furbelows with unconscious deftness and daintiness, while she gazed before her into the bright blue heaven; and, I am sorry to say, sucked her teeth. Reuben frankly flung one leg over the end of his seat, and conversed easily as he drove along, poised like a boy who rides a bare-back horse to water. After awhile he even felt emboldened to resume the forbidden theme of conversation. “Nature is nature, Samantha,” he said.