“Don’t you know that would be givin’ away the trouble of the young Mayos--and them livin’ together now like turtledoves?” roared Hiram. “Look at my brother Phin--one of God’s own gentlemen, if there ever was one. Him a-breakin’ his heart and misjudged and old Willard’s girl passin’ him by be-. cause he smashed King Bradish before her face and eyes--and Bradish with the last word to her! Don’t you suppose my brother could square himself with her by just one word of what he knows? But will he do it after he has passed ’Rissy Mayo his word that so long as she behaves herself he won’t give her away to any livin’ soul? You can say he’s a fool if you want to, but I tell ye, Sime, when a man has got as far along in life as Phin has without breakin’ his solemn word, you can’t blame him if he’d rather gnaw himself inside than have those whom he gives away scorch him outside.” He had furiously puffed his cigar down to the end. Now he lighted another. “I never approved of him carin’ a snap for the Willard girl, Sime. I don’t like her. I don’t like the breed. But this lovin’ of folks ain’t to be regulated jest the way you’d like to have it. If my brother can keep his mouth shut about King Bradish’s rottenness when, as you might say, it’s a wife at stake for him, then I guess I can keep still when it’s only a grudge that I’m workin’.” “Then it ain’t no wife in your case?” pursued Peak, suspiciously. “I tell ye, all I can do now is to hint,” insisted Hiram, evading the main question. “I’ve jest got her on the anxious seat. It’s the way I struck up her interest first of all. I couldn’t have got near her with a ten-foot pole if I hadn’t got her curiosity started by hints. Then, of course, she wanted to know what I meant and I’ve been puttin’ her off ever since. You never saw a woman so worked up as she is, Sime--never. She can’t hardly stand it till I come again. Then she lets into me to tell her all about Cap Bodfish. She don’t want to leave go of him till she knows definite. I reckon she wants to have him around so as to peel him when she does find out that there really is something in what I hint.” The showman chuckled again. “And it’s kind of what you might call a lingerin’ death for him--one of the slow kind like bein’ gnawed by ants. Ev’ry time he goes up to see her she don’t know whuther to love him or club him off’n the premises--and she blows hot and she blows cold all in one minit, and if he ain’t the wust puzzled man that ever tried to box compass in the sea of matrimony, then I’ll eat the celluloid peel in a side-show lemonade.” “Don’t he suspect what it all means?” inquired Peak, beginning to appreciate the situation with the malice of a man who has been fooled and enjoys seeing others in the same boat.