“Wal, Tom he was in high feather 'cause Miry took him, so that he didn't reelly know how to behave; and so, as they was walkin' along past Parson Lothrop's apple-orchard, Tom thought he'd try bein' familiar, and he undertook to put his arm round Miry. Wal, if she didn't jest take that little fellow by his two shoulders and whirl him over the fence into the orchard quicker'n no time. 'Why,' says Tom, 'the fust I knew I was lyin' on my back under the appletrees lookin' up at the stars.' Miry she jest walked off home and said nothin' to nobody,--it wa'n't her way to talk much about things; and, if it hedn't ben for Tom Beacon himself, nobody need 'a' known nothin' about it. Tom was a little fellow, you see, and 'mazin' good-natured, and one o' the sort that couldn't keep nothin' to himself; and so he let the cat out o' the bag himself. Wal, there didn't nobody think the worse o' Miry. When fellers find a gal won't take saace from no man, they kind o' respect her; and then fellers allers thinks ef it hed ben _them_, now, things 'd 'a' been different. That's jest what Jim Moss and Ike Bacon said: they said, why Tom Beacon was a fool not to know better how to get along with Miry,--_they_ never had no trouble. The fun of it was, that Tom Beacon himself was more crazy after her than he was afore; and they say he made Miry a right up-and-down offer, and Miry she jest wouldn't have him. “Wal, you see, that went agin old Black Hoss John's idees: old Black Hoss was about as close as a nut and as contrairy as a pipperage-tree. You ought to 'a' seen him. Why, his face was all a perfect crisscross o' wrinkles. There wa'n't a spot where you could put a pin down that there wa'n't a wrinkle; and they used to say that he held on to every cent that went through his fingers till he'd pinched it into two. You couldn't say that his god was his belly, for he hedn't none, no more'n an old file: folks said that he'd starved himself till the moon'd shine through him. “Old Black Hoss was awfully grouty about Miry's refusin' Tom Beacon, 'cause there was his houses and lots o' land in Boston. A drefful worldly old critter Black Hoss John was: he was like the rich fool in the gospel. Wal, he's dead and gone now, poor critter, and what good has it all done him? It's as the Scriptur' says, 'He heapeth up riches, and knoweth not who shall gather them.'