"I stopped at Sary's," replied the farmer. "Ho! ho! yes, Sary gave me some supper, though she warn't in no mood for seein' comp'ny, even her own kin. Poor Sary! she was in a dretful takin', sure enough!" "Why, what was the matter?" asked Dame Hartley, as she trimmed and lighted the great lamp, and drew the short curtains of Turkey red cotton across the windows. "Is Abner sick again!" "Shouldn't wonder if he was, by this time," replied the farmer; "but he warn't at the beginnin' of it. I'll tell ye how 'twas;" and he sat down in his great leather chair, and stretched his legs out comfortably before him, while his wife filled his pipe and brought it to him,--a little attention which she never forgot. "Sary, she bought a new bunnit yisterday!" Farmer Hartley continued, puffing away at the pipe. "She's kind o' savin', ye know, Sary is [Nurse Lucy nodded, with a knowing air], and she hadn't had a new bunnit for ten years. (I d' 'no' 's she's had one for twenty!" he added in parenthesis; "_I_ never seed her with one to my knowledge.) Wal, the gals was pesterin' her, an' sayin' she didn't look fit to go to meetin' in the old bunnit, so 't last she giv' way, and went an' bought a new one. 'Twas one o' these newfangled shapes. What was it Lizy called it? Somethin' Chinese, I reckon. Fan Song! That was it!" "Fanchon, wasn't it, perhaps?" asked Hilda, much amused. "That's what I said, warn't it?" said the farmer. "Fan Song, Fan Chong,--wal, what's the odds? 'Twas a queer lookin' thing, anyhow, I sh'd think, even afore it-- Wal, I'm comin' to that. Sary showed it to the gals, and they liked it fust-rate; then she laid it on the kitchen table, an' went upstairs to git some ribbons an' stuff to put on it. She rummaged round consid'able upstairs, an' when she kum down, lo and behold, the bunnit was gone! Wal, Sary hunted high, and she hunted low. She called the gals, thinkin' they'd played a trick on her, an' hidden it for fun. But they hadn't, an' they all set to an' sarched the house from garrit to cellar; but they didn't find hide nor hair o' that bunnit. At last Sary give it up, an' sot down out o' breath, an' mad enough to eat somebody. 'It's been stole!' says she. 'Some ornery critter kem along while I was upstairs,' says she, 'an' seed it lyin' thar on the table, an' kerried it off!' says she. 'I'd like to get hold of her!' says she; 'I guess she wouldn't steal no more bunnits for _one_ while!' says she. I had come in by that time, an' she was tellin' me all about it. Jest at that minute the door opened, and Abner kem sa'nterin' in, mild and moony as usual 'Sary,' says he,--ho! ho! ho! it makes me laugh to think on't,--'Sary,' says he, 'I wouldn't buy no more baskets without handles, ef I was you. They ain't convenient to kerry,' says he. And with that he sets down on the table--that Fan Chong bunnit! He'd been mixin' chicken feed in it, an' he'd held it fust by one side an' then by the other, an' he'd dropped it in the mud too, I reckon, from