"Bring forth the stovepipe, The stovepipe, the stovepipe--" chanted Seffy's frivolous father in the way of the Anvil Chorus. "And my butterfly necktie with--" "Wiss the di'mond on?" whispered his father. They laughed in confidence of their secret. Seffy, the successful wooer, was thawing out again. The diamond was not a diamond at all--the Hebrew who sold it to Seffy had confessed as much. But he also swore that if it were kept in perfect polish no one but a diamond merchant could tell the difference. Therefore, there being no diamond merchant anywhere near, and the jewel being always immaculate, Seffy presented it as a diamond and had risen perceptibly in the opinion of the vicinage. "And--and--and--Sef--Seffy, what you goin' to _do_?" "Do?" Seffy had been absorbed in what he was going to wear. "Yas--yas--that's the most important." He encircled Seffy's waist and gently squeezed it. "Oh, of _course_! Hah? But what _yit_?" I regret to say that Seffy did not understand. "Seffy," he said impressively, "you haf' tol' me what you goin' to wear. It ain't much. The weather's yit pooty col' nights. But I ken stand it if you ken--God knows about Sally! Now, what you goin' to _do_--that's the conuntrum I ast you!" Still it was not clear to Seffy. "Why--what I'm a-going to do, hah? Why--whatever occurs." "Gosh-a'mighty! And nefer say a word or do a sing to help the occurrences along? Goshens! What a setting-up! Why--say--Seffy, what you set up _for_?" Seffy did not exactly know. He had never hoped to practise the thing--in that sublimely militant phase. "What do _you_ think?" "Well, Sef--plow straight to her heart. I wisht I had your chance. I'd show you a other-guess kind a setting-up--yassir! Make your mouth warter and your head swim, begoshens! Why, that Sally's just like a young stubble-field; got to be worked constant, and plowed deep, and manured heafy, and mebby drained wiss blind ditches, and crops changed constant, and kep' a-going thataway--constant--constant--so's the weeds can't git in her. Then you ken put her in wheat after a while and git your money back." This drastic metaphor had its effect. Seffy began to understand. He said so. "Now, look here, Seffy," his father went on more softly, "when you git to this--and this--and this,"--he went through his pantomime again, and it included a progressive caressing to the kissing point--"well, chust when you bose comfortable--hah?--mebby on one cheer, what I know--it's so long sence I done it myself--when you bose comfortable, ast her--chust ast her--aham!--what she'll take for the pasture-field! She owns you bose and she can't use bose you and the pasture. A bird in the hand is worth seferal in another feller's--not so?" But Seffy only stopped and stared at his father. This, again, he did _not_ understand. "You know well enough I got no money to buy no pasture-field," said he.