Calvin sat down instantly, and laid his hand on the old man's arm for a moment. "That's all right, Mr. Cheeseman!" he said briefly but kindly. "We'll forget that part. Now let's get on to the rest on't." Mr. Cheeseman drew a long breath that was almost a sob, and his frosty blue eyes were dim for a moment. He wiped them quietly with a blue cotton handkerchief. "I thank you, sir!" he said. "Well, I found the whole street buzzin' with it yesterday. They said you gave her a fur tippet. How was that, friend Calvin?" "I did!" Calvin's brown face flushed. "I just plain fool did. She as good as asked me for it, Mr. Cheeseman, and what could I do? If ever I gredged money in my life 'twas that, and me turnin' every cent twice to make it go further. But when she went on about her brown keeters, and the doctor sayin' she must wrop her throat up, and if only she could have a fur tippet it might save her life--and goin' so fur as to name the special one she wanted in Hoskins's window--and Christmas time and all, and nobody seemin' to have any feelin' for them two forlorn creatur's--Mr. Cheeseman, if you're a woodenhead, I'm a sheep's-head, that's all there is to it. So that started the talk, did it? What in caniption makes folks want to talk I don't know!" he broke out. "Darn their hides!" "That started it!" said Mr. Cheeseman; "and she has seen to it that the talk went on. She was in town all day yesterday, flyin' round like a hen with her head cut off--" "She'd look a sight better with hers that way!" said Calvin _sotto voce_. "Buyin' this and that, and givin' folks to understand 'twas her weddin' things. I don't know as she used them precise words, but I do know she said to Hoskins--she was in there gettin' some dress goods, and he told me himself--'I'll take the blue,' she says, "for Cap'n Parks admires blue, and I have to dress to please him now!' she says." Calvin Parks groaned. A vision rose before him of Mary Sands in her blue dress, with the sun shining on her hair. "Then she went to Jinny Bascom's," the old man went on, "and bought her a bunnet. Where she got the money I don't know, nor Jinny didn't. I guess she nor the old woman ever spent more than fifty cents at a time in their lives before; but she got a ten dollar bunnet, no two ways about that; and she was a caution gettin' it, by all accounts. Jinny has always knowed Phrony; every one round about Cyrus knows them two and their goin's on. Lived mostly on grocery samples and borrowed garden truck till you come to board with 'em; and I don't believe they've fed you high enough to hurt you any, have they?" "Well! I don't know as I've been in any real danger of apoplexy from over-eatin'," said Calvin slowly; "but I ain't made no complaint."