“Well, Bens’ came bootin’ down to the office here and wanted me to sue Deacon Bassett, who had been praying for rain to fill his mill-pond. Laid the whole damage of the cloudburst to the deacon’s power of supplication. I don’t have anything to do with these love cloudbursts around here.” “But you encouraged the cussed fools--torch ’em on,” persisted Amazeen. “No, it’s a chap named Hymen that carries the torch, ’Mad’. In Wat’s case I wasn’t even actuated by a mercenary motive, for he owned up that he didn’t have the fee, and he hasn’t paid me yet, and he probably never will.” “And them’s the kind of double-hitches you’re throwing the harness over!” sneered Amazeen. “She’s handsomer than the chromo picture on a calendar--you’ve got to say that about the snippet,” commented Lysimachus Buck, desiring to provoke the Squire to retort. “You’d ought to ’a’ plunked advice right to him not to do it, Squire,” sputtered Amazeen. “It has raised the devil with him--and he wasn’t none too bright before. Who knows anything about an industrial school girl like her? She don’t know nothin’ about herself. I tell you, it’s been a hard pill for the Mayos to swaller. Their only boy clearin’ out like he done, leavin’ a good, comf’table home and now only a swipe in Jote Bradley’s livery stable!” The lawyer leaned back in his chair, and, hooking his leg over the arm, softly scratched the back of the appreciative old dog with dangling boot toe. “Eli, here, has often remarked to me,” he said, squinting up at the cracked ceiling, the quizzical pucker still at his mouth corners, “that I let love as a special pleading overrule exceptions right along. “I do really suppose I have done a master sight of malicious mischief in the world by marrying these young critters that are fighting the old folks and don’t dare to flee to the parsons, and haven’t a single, reasonable, sensible, _business_ excuse for getting married, except that they’ve fallen in love themselves instead of waiting and letting the farms or the fishing schooners be introduced to each other by the old folks and fall in love. There’s nothing prettier in this world, ’Mad,’ than a hundred and twenty acre farm sighing with its corn tassels and a neighbouring farm rippling back an answer with its oat heads, and both of ’em getting so much in love with one another that it is only necessary for the young folks to get together and ratify the match and count the wedding presents.” Old Amazeen snorted disgustedly. “There ain’t no more practicality to you, Squire, than there is to a June bug tryin’ to butt the moon. I tell ye, proputty has got to be considered first!” The Squire still gazed meditatively at the ceiling through the tobacco smoke.