When they were gone, and Lydia and Staniford had said good-night, and Miss Maria, coming in from the kitchen with a hand-lamp for her father, approached the marble-topped centre-table to blow out the large lamp of pea-green glass with red woollen wick, which had shed the full radiance of a sun-burner upon the festival, she faltered at a manifest unreadiness in the old man to go to bed, though the fire was low, and they had both resumed the drooping carriage of people in going about cold houses. He looked excited, and, so far as his unpracticed visage could intimate the emotion, joyous. “Well, there, Maria!” he said. “You can't say but what he's a master-hand to converse, any way. I'd know as I ever see Mr. Goodlow more struck up with any one. He looked as if every word done him good; I presume it put him in mind of meetin's with brother ministers: I don't suppose but what he misses it some, here. You can't say but what he's a fine appearin' young man. I d'know as I see anything wrong in his kind of dressin' up to the nines, as you may say. As long's he's got the money, I don't see what harm it is. It's all worked for good, Lyddy's going out that way; though it did seem a mysterious providence at the time.” “Well!” began Miss Maria. She paused, as if she had been hurried too far by her feelings, and ought to give them a check before proceeding. “Well, I don't presume you'd notice it, but she's got a spot on her silk, so't a whole breadth's got to come out, and be let in again bottom side up. I guess there's a pair of 'em, for carelessness.” She waited a moment before continuing: “I d'know as I like to see a husband puttin' his arm round his wife, even when he don't suppose any one's lookin'; but I d'know but what it's natural, too. But it's one comfort to see't she ain't the least mite silly about _him_. He's dreadful freckled.” Miss Maria again paused thoughtfully, while her father burnt his fingers on the stove for the last time, and took them definitively away. “I don't say but what he talked well enough, as far forth as talkin' _goes_; Mr. Goodlow said at the door't he didn't know's he ever passed _many_ such evenin's since he'd been in South Bradfield, and I d'know as _I_ have. I presume he has his faults; we ain't any of us perfect; but he _does_ seem terribly wrapped up in Lyddy. I don't say but what he'll make her a good husband, if she must _have_ one. I don't suppose but what people might think, as you may say, 't she'd made out pretty well; and if Lyddy's suited, I d'know as anybody else has got any call to be over particular.” THE END. End of Project Gutenberg's The Lady of the Aroostook, by William Dean Howells