“Oh, I won’t,” I exclaimed apprehensively. “I’m not throwing anybody at you at all. I was just going to say that though he is such an excellent man, and near to Julian and all that, he ossifies the working of my joints: I feel in such awe of him.” “I don’t,” said Jennie. “Yes; I’ve noticed that.” “I think his society is wholesome for me.” “Yes; it seems to be mutual,” I could not help suggesting. “Either you or T’férgore is limbering him up until I do believe in the course of time his presence will become wholesome for _me_.” Leander, drawing Jennie and the Old Daguerreotype in our red cart, went briskly down the road, and Julian and T’férgore and I sat watching them. “They will loiter through the woods,” mused I, “and watch the festoons of grapevine, and get a sniff of sycamore leaves and pennyroyal mixed with loam.” “Yes,” said Julian. “Next week I shall take you and Ferguson off through the woodsiest drive of them all.” “Julian,” I remonstrated, “her name isn’t and it never will be Ferguson.” “Oh, well,” said Julian, “the bill is laid on the table then. Another motion will be in order.” “And they’ll see bunches of goldenrod in a thicket,” I continued, returning to Leander’s load, “and the Old Daguerreotype will jump out to get it for her, footing it lightsomely among the burrs.” “You make quite a beau of our uncle,” said Julian, turning his cigar over. “Well, I should think anybody could see that’s what he wants to be considered.” “He has my consent,” said Julian. “Mine, too,” said I, taking high grounds; “but I’m not so sure about Jennie. She’s a woman who has been hard to suit. Nothing else stood in the way of her marrying long ago.” I looked keenly at Julian, but he evidently knew naught about the one month divorced man with a wife and five children--the youngest two years old. It was the only secret I had ever kept from him, and it burned guiltily at the roots of my tongue. But the woman who reveals to her lord and master some unlovely weakness of her own sex helps him to a judgment-seat too dangerously lofty. “She’s what you may really call superior,” admitted Julian, “but far enough into the woods to be afraid of the crooked stick. And Uncle Theoph. isn’t so bad.” “No,” I granted generously: “he doesn’t make me half as miserable as he used to. And I know he won’t mind getting bugs down his neck and stumbling over old logs for yellow and chocolate colored pawpaw leaves and branches of fire-red maple, if Jennie wants him to.” “I wonder,” Julian ruminated, “if Aunt Marvin ever made him dance around when they were young together and she had a ribbon headdress on her hair, and he choked himself with a stock.” “No,” said I, “she was his first wife.” Julian reached over, at the risk of waking T’férgore, and laid his arm across my shoulder. “Besides, she never cried,” I added. “And a good husband is just like a growing crop: he needs to be rained on.”