It was a mile and a half from Aunt Molly’s to Captain Peabody’s, and I thought we had been about a minute on the road. So says I: “Hannah, let’s go set down under the great apple-tree and have-a little chat, just to taper off the evening.” We now sat down and began to talk sensible. We settled all the predicaments of the nuptial ceremony, and then talked over the store till we thought we saw ourselves behind the counter; I weighing and measuring, and dickering and dealing out, and she, at the desk, pen in hand, figuring up the accounts. “And mind, John,” says she, “I’m not a-going to trust everybody at the corner, I tell ye.” But just as we were beginning to get sociable, as I thought, Hannah looks up, and says she: “What can that ’ere great red streak be, in the sky, away down there beyond Sacarrap?” “I rather guess,” says I, “it’s a fire in the woods.” “Fire in the woods! I’ll be skinned if it isn’t daylight a-coming. Quick, John, help me into the window before father’s a-stirring, or here’ll be a pretty how d’ye do.” The next job was to tell the news to Captain Peabody. Hannah had settled it that she should speak to her mother, and said she could manage her well enough, and it was my business to ask her father. This was a thing easier said than done. It stuck in my crop for days, like a raw onion. I tried to persuade Hannah to marry fust, and ask afterwards. Says I: “You are twenty-four, and free according to law.” But she wouldn’t hear to it. She had no notion of doing anything clandestinely. Then I asked Doctor Dingley to go and break the ice for me. But no: he would not meddle with other folks’ business—he made it a point. “Well,” says I, “if I have got to come to the scratch, the less I consider on it the better.” So one stormy day I put my head down against a north-easter, and set my feet a-going; and the next thing I was standing right before Captain Peabody. He was in his grain-house, shelling corn, sitting on a tub, with an old frying-pan stuck through the handles; and he made the cobs fly every which way, hit or miss—he didn’t care. But it tickled him so to see me dodge ’em, that he got into uncommon good humour. “Well, Johnny Beedle, what has bro’t you up here, right into the wind’s eye, this ere morning?” “Why, Cap’m, I’ve got an idea in my head.” “No! how you talk!” “Ye see, the upshot of the matter is, I’ve a notion of setting up a store, and getting a wife, and settling myself down as a merchant.” “Whoorah, John, there’s two ideas—a store and a wife.” “But I want a little of your help,” says I. “Well, John,” says he, “I’ll do the handsome thing by ye. If you keep better goods than anybody else, and sell cheaper, you shall have my custom, and welcome, provided you’ll take pay in sauce and things. Isn’t that fair?” “O, yes, Cap’m.”