And then and there, while Reuben Pett’s great rasping whistle rang through the old saw-mill, shrilling above the roar of the storm outside, Mrs. Samantha Spaulding executed with lightning rapidity and with the precision of perfect and confident knowledge, a dancing-step which for scientific complexity and daring originality had been twenty years before the surprise, the delight, the tingling, shocking, tempting nine-days’-wonder of the country-side. [Illustration] “Whee-ee-ee, ee-ee, ee ee, ee ee ee, whee, ee, ee ee, ee _ee_!” Reuben Pett’s whistle died away from sheer lack of breath as Samantha came to the end of her dance. * * * * * There is nothing that hath a more heavy and leaden cold than a chilled enthusiasm. When the storm was over, although a laughing light [Illustration] played over the landscape; although diamond sparkles lit up the grateful white mist that rose from the refreshed earth; although the sun shone as though he had been expecting that thunder storm all day, and was inexpressibly glad that it was over and done with, Samantha leaned back in her seat in the calash, and nursed a cheerless bitterness of spirit--such a bitterness as is known only to the New England woman to whom has come a realization of the fact that she has made a fool of herself. Samantha Spaulding. Made a fool of herself. At her age. After twenty years of respectable widowhood. Her, of all folks. And with that old fool. Who’d be’n a-settin’ and a-settin’ and a-settin’ all these years. And never said Boo! And now for him to twist her round his finger like that. She felt like--well, she didn’t know how she _did_ feel. She was so long wrapped up in her own thoughts that it was with a start that she awoke to the fact that they were making very slow progress, and that this was due to the very peculiar conduct of Mr. Pett. He was making little or no effort to urge the horse along, and the horse, consequently, having got tired of wasting his bright spirits on the empty air, was maundering. So was Mr. Pett, in another way. He mumbled to himself; from time to time he whistled scraps of old-fashioned tunes, and occasionally he sang to himself a brief catch--the catch coming in about the third or fourth bar. “Look here, Reuben Pett!” demanded Samantha, shrilly; “be you going to get to Byram’s Pond to-night?” “I _kin_,” replied Reuben. “Well, _be_ you?” Samantha Spaulding inquired. “I d’no. Fact is, I wa’n’t figurin’ on that just now.” “Well, what _was_ you figurin’ on?” snapped Mrs. Spaulding. “When you’s goin’ to marry me,” Mr. Pett answered with perfect composure. “Look here, Samantha! it’s this way: here’s twenty years you’ve kept me waitin’.” “_Me_ kept you waitin’! Well, Reuben Pett, if I ever!”