"Oh! they don't mean no harm," said Calvin; "not a mite. I git on first-rate so long as they do; it's only when they get to quarrellin' that I mind. When they fall afoul of each other, it ain't real agreeable; but there's where it comes in handy bein' a man. Hossy and me can git out from under foot most times, and leave 'em to train by themselves." He paused, and shook his head with a reminiscent chuckle. "Last week we had us quite a time!" he said. "Phrony got some kind of a bee in her bunnet--I dono what it was! seemed to have a kind of idee that she was goin' to git married, if only she had some money. I never see no man round the house, nor yet heard none speak of her; and, too, if she'd looked in the glass she'd have seen 'twarn't real reasonable to expect it. However it was, so it was; she's got her eye on somebody, no question about that. Well, it's a small farm, and the soil ain't any too rich; they git along, but no more than, I expect; and yet they don't spend a cent more'n they have to, you may resk your eye-teeth on that. Well, anyways, here's what happened. I come in one night, and the old lady was sittin' studyin' over a letter or like that. When she saw me, 'Cap'n,' she says (always calls me Cap'n, same as she did the old man), 'will you cast your eye over that,' she says, 'and tell me what you think of it?' "I looked it over, and you may call me a horn-pout, Miss Hands and boys, if 'twarn't a bill from Phrony, drawed up in reg'lar style, chargin' her mother three dollars a week wages for thirty years. Now, Miss Hands, I'd like to know what you think of that." "I think 'twas scandalous!" cried Mary Sands, emphatically. "I think she ought to be ashamed of herself. The idea!" "Well, it didn't seem to me real suitable," said Calvin; "I couldn't _make_ it seem so, and so I said. 'What's got into her?' I said. 'You and her belong together; and what's one's is 'tother's, ain't it, so far as livin' goes?' "The old lady looks at me kind o' queer. 'Phrony ain't satisfied,' she says. 'She thinks the Lord designs her to be a helpmeet, and that He's manifestin' Himself at present, or liable so to do.'