Mr. Ivory Cheeseman certainly did look rather like a monkey, but such a wise monkey! He was little and spare, with nothing profuse about him save his white hair, which grew thick and close as a cap; his whole aspect was dry and frosty, "like the right kind of winter mornin'," Calvin Parks said when he described the old man to Mary Sands. The kitchen in which he and Calvin were sitting was just behind the shop; a low, dark room, with a little stove in the middle, glowing like a red jewel, and waking dusky gleams in the pots and pans ranged along the walls. They were not altogether ordinary pots and pans. Uncle Ivory, as East Cyrus called him, was a collector in a modest way, and his bits of copper, brass and pewter were dear to his heart. Lonzo, the village "natural," found the gaiety of his life in polishing them, and receiving pay in sugar-plums. He was at work now in a dim corner, chuckling to himself as he scoured a huge old pewter dish. [Illustration: MR. CHEESEMAN.] The air was full of the warm, homely fragrance of molasses candy; a pot of it was boiling on the stove, and from time to time Uncle Ivory stirred it, lifted a spoonful, and watched the drip. On a table near by other candies were cooling, peanut taffy, lemon drops, and great masses of pink and white cream candy. "Yes," said Calvin, pursuing his own thoughts. "This is another pleasant home. Considerable many of 'em in these parts, or so it appears to a lone person. I judge you're a single man, Mr. Cheeseman?" "Widower!" said Mr. Cheeseman briefly. "That so!" said Calvin. They watched the molasses for a time, as it bubbled up in little gold-brown mounds that flowed away in foam as the spoon touched them. "She's killin' good to-day!" remarked the old man. "Cream-o'-tartar?" asked Calvin. "Yes! I never use any other. Yes, sir; I had a good wife, a real good one; and might have had another, if I'd judged it convenient." Calvin looked up expectantly; it was evident that more was coming. Mr. Cheeseman began to stir the molasses with long, slow sweeps of the spoon, talking the while. "It was this way. My wife had a friend that she thought the world of. Well, she thought the world of me too, and when it come time for her to go, nothin' to it but I must marry this woman. The night before 'Liza was taken, she says to me, 'Ivory,' she says, 'I've left it in writin' that if you marry Elviry you'll get that two thousand dollars that's in the bank; and if not it goes to the children.' Children was married and settled, two of 'em, and well fixed. 'I want you to promise me you will!' she says." "And did you?" asked Calvin. "No, I didn't. I warn't goin' to tie myself up again. I'd been married thirty years, and that was enough." "What _did_ you say, if I may ask?" "I said I'd think about it, and let her know in the mornin'. I knew she'd be gone by then, and she was." Again they watched the boiling in silence. Calvin looked somewhat disturbed.