Then Aunt Ailsie went in and waked Jeems. "You've put in seventeen hours good sleep," she said, "and I allow your stummick needs a leetle comfort next. You got plenty of time to get ready for dinner. I fotched you in a pan of warm water and soap and a towel and wash-rag, allowing you might feel to take a good wash-off. Then you can put on this here clean shirt of Lot's,--I couldn't get yourn off'n you to wash hit,--and these here breeches I washed for you, and clean socks and shoes, and then come in the kitchen-house and take you a shave with Lot's strop and razor, and then I'll crap your hair,--hit looks like hit hain't seed scissors sence Mallie died,--and then you'll begin to feel more like yourself." An hour later, Jeems, washed, dressed, shaved, shingled, and combed, was indeed a transformed man--the hollow look gone from eyes and cheeks, twenty years from his age. "If you could meet up with yourself, Jeems, you wouldn't never know hit was the same man rid up here a-yesterday," said Aunt Ailsie, proud of her handiwork. "You look now about what you air--thirty-two come September; I ricollect your birth, you and Link being nigh of an age. You look fitten now to start out a-courting to-morrow. Not," she added hastily, seeing an awakening gleam in Jeems's eye, "not to court young gals, of course, but to court them of an age with you. Of course, you'll never be what you once was, in those fur-off young days when me 'n' your maw used to take pride in your looks." "Hit seems to me like two or three weeks sence yesterday," remarked Jeems, who appeared to be in a kind of daze. "I don't noways feel like the same man." "You hain't," pronounced Aunt Ailsie. "You was in a pure franzy for sleep. And now you got hit, hit has wropt up your narves, and swaged down your feelings, and knit up your faculties, till you're in some fix to look around you and get things kindly straightened out in your mind, and take counsel about what you come for--the job of getting you a wife. "Now I knowed in reason you'd be a-seeing troubles, though I never tuck the full measure of 'em, or drempt how nigh crazed and drove you was. But when these here furrin women come in, and I seed how smart and pretty they was, and all the way from twenty-three to twenty-eight year old, and nary a man to their name, seemed like hit went through me like a knife, I felt so bad for sech sweet creeturs to be old maids. And then I thought right off of you, and how scand'lous bad you needed a wife, and your young-uns a maw, and how proud you'd be doing yourself to get one of these fine, fotched-on women; and I jest put two and two together, Jeems, and sont you word immediate, afore any more widow-men could get in ahead of you; for you know they's allus several round about, all on the look, and I knowed when they seed these women they'd be atter 'em hot-foot. And when you didn't come sooner, I begun to get right scared for your chances. But I hope you hain't too late yet.