The stupidity and extravagance of some people silenced him for a moment, then he continued: "My Lizzie, now, she knows better how to spend money. She bought ten dollars' worth of flavors and soap and things like that and she got in the bargain a big chest of drawers bigger than this old one, and it was polished up finer and had a looking-glass on the top yet. That man must have a lot of money to give forty dollars for one piece of furniture! Ach"--in answer to a remonstrance from his companion--"they can't hear me. I don't talk loud, and anyhow, they're listening to the auctioneer. That girl with him has a funny streak too. She bought the old cradle and then I heard her tell Hetty that she just bought it for fun and she gave it to Hetty. So, is that man Phares Eby from near Greenwald? Well, I thought he'd have too much sense to buy such a thing for forty dollars, but some people gets crazy when they get to a sale. Who ever heard of a person buying a cradle for fun and giving it away? But I guess that cradles went out of style some time ago. My girl Lizzie wasn't raised with funny notions like some girls have nowadays, but when she was married and had her first baby and we told her she could borrow the old cradle she was rocked in to put her baby in, she said she didn't want it, for cradles ain't healthy for babies, it is bad to rock babies! I guess that was her man's dumb notion, for he's a professor in the High School where they live, but he's just Jake Forney's John. They get along fine, but they do some dumb things. They let that baby yell till he found out that he wouldn't get rocked. It made her mom quite sick when we were up to visit them, and sometimes we'd sneak rocking it a little, just so the little fellow'd know there is such a thing as getting rocked. They don't want any person to kiss that baby, neither. Course I ain't in favor of everybody kissing a baby, but I can't see the hurt of its own people kissing it. We used to take it behind the door and kiss it good, and it's living yet. Ain't, Eph, it's a wonder we ever growed up, the way we were bounced and rocked and joggled and kissed! I say it ain't right to go back on cradles; they belong to babies. But look, Eph, there she's buying them old copper sheep bells! Wonder if she keeps sheep." Phœbe, triumphant bidder for a pair of hand-beaten copper sheep bells, turned and looked at the farmer. The tenderness of a bright smile still played about her lips and the old man, interpreting the smile as a personal greeting to him, drew near and spoke to her. "I can tell you what to take to clean them bells." "Thank you," she answered cordially, "but I do not want to clean them." "But you can make them shiny if you take----" "You are very kind, but I really want to keep them just as they are." The old man looked at her for a moment, then shook his head as though in perplexity and turned away.