"Come now, Matabel," said Mrs. Verstage, when both she and the young wife were alone together, "I did well to push this on, eh? You have a decent house, and a good farm. All yours, not rented, so none can turn you out. What more could you desire? I dare be sworn Bideabout has got a pretty nest egg stuck away somewhere, up the chimney or under the hearth. Has he shown you what he has? There was the elder Gilly Cheel was a terrible skinflint. When he died his sons hunted high and low for his money and couldn't find it. And just as they wos goin' to bury him, the nuss said she couldn't make a bootiful corpse of him, he were that puffed in his mouth. What do you think, Matabel? The old chap had stuffed his money into his mouth when he knew he was dyin'. Didn't want nobody to have it but himself. Don't you let Bideabout try any of them games." "Have you missed me greatly, dear mother?" asked Mehetabel, who had heard the story of Giles Cheel before. Mrs. Verstage sighed. "My dear, do you know the iron-stone bowl as belonged to my mother. The girl broke it, and hadn't the honesty to say so, but stuck it together wi' yaller soap, and thought I wouldn't see it. Then one of the customers made her laugh, and she let seven pewters fall, and they be battered outrageous. And she has been chuckin' the heel taps to the hog, and made him as drunk as a Christian. She'll drive me out of my seven senses." "So you do miss me, mother?" "My dear--no--I'm not selfish. It is all for your good. There wos Martha Lintott was goin' to a dance, and dropped her bustle. Patty Pickett picked it up, and thinkin' she couldn't have too much of a good thing, clapped it on a top of her own and cut a fine figure wi' it--wonderful. And Martha looked curious all up and down wi'out one. But she took it reasonable, and said, 'What's one woman's loss is another woman's gain.' O, my dear life! If Iver would but settle with Polly Colpus I should die content." "Is not the match agreed to yet?" "No!" Mrs. Verstage sighed. "I've got my boy back, but not for long. He talks of remaining here awhile to paint--subjects, he calls 'em, but he don't rise to Polly as I should like. Polly is a good girl. Master Colpus was at your weddin', and was very civil to Iver. I heard him invite the boy to come over and look in on him some evening--Sunday, for instance, and have a bite of supper and a glass. But Iver hasn't been nigh the Colpuses yet; and when I press him to go he shrugs his shoulders and says he has other and better friends he must visit first." Mrs. Verstage sighed again. "Well, perhaps he doesn't fancy Polly," said Mehetabel. "Why should he not fancy her? She will have five hundred pounds, and old James Colpus's land adjoins ours. I don't understand Iver's ways at all." Mehetabel laughed. "Dear mother, you cannot expect that; he did not think with his father's head when a boy. He will think only with his own head now he is a man."