YE ain’t got hungry for termarters, be ye?”

Some one had knocked at the screen door, and as there was no response, a man’s strident, good-humored voice put the above question concerning tomatoes.

But somebody had heard.

A woman had been sitting in the kitchen with a pan of seek-no-further apples in her lap. She was paring and quartering these and then stabbing the quarters through and stringing them on yards of white twine, preparatory to festooning them on the clothes-horse which stood in the yard. This horse was already decorated profusely in this way. A cloud of wasps had flown from the drying fruit as the man walked up the path. He swung off his hat and waved the insects away.

“I say, have ye got hungry agin for termarters?” he repeated.

Then he rattled the screen; but it was hooked on the inside.

He turned and surveyed the three windows that were visible in the bit of a house.

“They wouldn’t both be gone, ‘n’ left them apples out,” he said to himself. “I’m ‘bout sure Ann’s to home; ‘n’ she’s the one I want to see.”

A woman in the bed-room which opened from the kitchen was hurriedly smoothing her hair and peering into the glass. She was speaking aloud with the air of one who constantly talks to herself.

“Jest as sure’s I don’t comb my hair the first thing, somebody comes.”

She gave a last pat and went to the door. There was a faint smirk on her lips and a flush on her face.

Her tall figure was swayed by a slight, eager tremor as she saw who was standing there. She exclaimed:—

“Goodness me! ‘T ain’t you, Mr. Baker, is it? Won’t ye walk right in? But I don’t want no termarters; they always go aginst me. Aunt Mandany ain’t to home.”

“Oh, ain’t she?” was the brisk response. “Then I guess I will come in.”

The speaker pushed open the now unfastened door and entered. He set his basket of tomatoes with a thump on the rug, and wiped his broad, red face.

“Fact is,” he said with a grin, “I knew she was gone. I seen her goin’ crosst the pastur’. That’s why I come now. I ain’t got no longin’ to see Aunt Mandany—no, sir-ee, not a grain of longin’ to see her. But I thought ‘t would be agreeable to me to clap my eyes on to you.”

The woman simpered, made an inarticulate sound, and hurriedly resumed her seat and her apple-cutting.

“Won’t you se’ down, Mr. Baker?” she asked.

Her fingers trembled as she took the darning-needle and jabbed it through an apple quarter. The needle went into her flesh also. She gave a little cry and thrust her finger into her mouth. Her large, pale eyes turned wistfully towards her companion. The faded, already elderly mouth quivered.

“I’m jest as scar’t ‘s I c’n be if I see blood,” she whispered.

Mr. Baker’s heavy under lip twitched; his face softened. But he spoke roughly.

“You needn’t mind that bit er blood,” he said, “that won’t hurt nothin’. I don’t care if I do se’ down. I ain’t drove any this mornin’. I c’n jest as well as not take hold ‘n’ help ye. I s’pose Mandany left a thunderin’ lot for ye to do while she’s gone?”

“Two bushels,” was the answer.

“The old cat! That’s too much. But ‘t won’t be for both of us, will it, Ann?”

The woman said, “No.”

She looked for an instant intently at the man who had drawn his chair directly opposite her. He was already paring an apple.

“I d’ know what to make of it,” she said, still in a whisper.

“To make of what?” briskly.

“Why, when folks are so good to me ‘s you be.”

“Oh, sho’, now! Everybody ain’t like your Aunt Mandany.”

“‘Sh! Don’t speak so loud! Mebby she’ll be comin’ back.”

“No, she won’t. ‘N’ no matter if she is.”

The loud, confident tone rang cheerily in the room.

During the silence that followed Mr. Baker watched Ann’s deft fingers.

“Everybody says you’re real capable,” he remarked.

A joyous red covered Ann’s face.

“I jest about do all the work here,” she said.

She looked at the man again.

There was something curiously sweet in the simple face. The patient line at each side of the close, pale mouth had a strange effect upon Mr. Baker.

He had been known to say violently in conversation at the store that he “never seen Ann Tracy ‘thout wantin’ to thrash her Aunt Mandany.”

“What in time be you dryin’ seek-no-further for?” he now exclaimed with some fierceness. “They’re the flattest kind of apples I know of.”

“That’s what Aunt says,” was the reply; “she says they’re most as flat’s as I be, ‘n’ that’s flat ‘nough.”

These words were pronounced as if the speaker were merely stating a well-known fact.

“Then what does she do um for?” persisted Mr. Baker.

“She says they’re good ‘nough to swop for groceries in the spring.”

Mr. Baker made a deep gash in an apple, and held his tongue.

Ann continued her work, but she took a good deal of seek-no-further with the skin in a way that would have shocked Aunt Mandany.

Suddenly she raised her eyes to the sturdy face opposite her and said:—

“I guess your wife had a real good time, didn’t she, Mr. Baker, when she was livin’?”

Mr. Baker dropped his knife. He glanced up and met the wistful gaze upon him.

Something that he had thought long dead stirred in his consciousness.

“I hope so,” he said gently. “I do declare I tried to make her have a good time.”

“How long’s she be’n dead?”

“‘Most ten year. We was livin’ down to Norris Corners then.”

The man picked up his knife and absently tried the edge of it on the ball of his thumb.

“I s’pose,” said Ann, “that folks are sorry when their wives die.”

Mr. Baker gave a short laugh.

“Wall, that depends.”

“Oh, does it? I thought folks had to love their wives, ‘n’ be sorry when they died.”

Here Mr. Baker laughed again. He made no other answer for several minutes. At last he said:

“I was sorry enough when my wife died.”

A great pile of quartered apples was heaped up in the wooden bowl before either spoke again.

Then Ann exclaimed with a piteous intensity:

“Oh, I’m awful tired of bein’ Aunt Mandany’s fool!”

Mr. Baker stamped his foot involuntarily.

“How jew know they call you that?” he cried in a great voice.

“I heard Jane Littlefield tell Mis’ Monk she hoped nobody’d ask Mandany’s fool to the sociable. And Mr. Fletcher’s boy told me that’s what folks called me.”

“Damn Jane Littlefield! Damn that little devil of a boy!”

These dreadful words burst out furiously.

Perhaps Ann did not look as shocked as she ought.

In a moment she smiled her immature, simple smile that had a touching appeal in it.

“‘T ain’t no use denyin’ it,” she said; “I ain’t jes’ like other folks, ‘n’ that’s a fact. I can’t think stiddy more ‘n a minute. Things all run together, somehow. ‘N’ the back er my head’s odd’s it can be.”

“Pooh! What of it? There can’t any of us think stiddy; ‘n’ if we could what would it amount to, I should like to know? It would n’t amount to a row of pins.”

Ann dropped her work and clasped her hands. Mr. Baker saw that her hands were hard, and stained almost black on fingers and thumbs by much cutting of apples.

“Ye see,” she said, in a tremulous voice, “sometimes I think if mother had lived she’d er treated me so ‘t I could think stiddier. I s’pose mother’d er loved me. They say mothers do. But Aunt Mandany told me mother died the year I got my fall from the cherry-tree. I was eight then. I don’t remember nothin’ ‘bout it, nor ‘bout anything much. Mr. Baker, do you remember your mother?”

Mr. Baker said “Yes,” abruptly. Something made it impossible for him to say more.

“I d’ know how ‘tis,” went on the thin, minor voice, “but it always did seem to me ‘s though if I could remember my mother I could think stiddier, somehow. Do you think I could?”

Mr. Baker started to his feet.

“I’ll be dumbed ‘f I c’n stan’ it,” he shouted. “No, nor I won’t stan’ it, nuther!”

He walked noisily across the room.

He came back and stood in front of Ann, who had patiently resumed work.

“Come,” he said, “I think a lot of ye. Le’s git married.”

Ann looked up. She dropped her knife.

“Then I should live with you?” she asked.

“Of course.”

She laughed.

There was so much of confident happiness in that laugh that the man’s heart glowed youthfully.

“I shall be real glad to marry you, Mr. Baker,” she said. Then, with pride, “‘N’ I c’n cook, ‘n’ I know first rate how to do housework.”

She rose to her feet; her eyes shone.

Mr. Baker put his arm about her.

“Le’s go right along now,” he said, more quickly than he had yet spoken. “We’ll call to the minister’s ‘n’ engage him. You c’n stop there. We’ll be married to-day.”

“Can’t ye wait till I c’n put on my bunnit ‘n’ shawl?” Ann asked.

She left the room. In a few moments she returned dressed for going. She had a sheet of note-paper, a bottle of ink, and a pen in her hands.

“I c’n write,” she said confidently, “‘n’ I call it fairer to leave word for Aunt Mandany.”

“All right,” was the response; “go ahead.”

Mr. Baker said afterward that he never got much more nervous in his life than while Ann was writing that note. What if Mandany should appear! He wasn’t going to back out, but he didn’t want to see that woman.

The ink was thick, the pen was like a pin, and Ann was a good while making each letter, but the task was at last accomplished. She held out the sheet to her companion.

“Ain’t that right?” she asked.

Mr. Baker drew his face down solemnly as he read:—

“That’s jest the thing,” he said explosively. “Now, come on.”

As they walked along in the hot fall sunshine Mr. Baker said earnestly:—

“I’m certain sure we sh’ll be ever so much happier.”

“So ‘m I,” Ann replied, with cheerful confidence.

They were on a lonely road, and they walked hand in hand.

“I’m goin’ to be good to ye,” said the man, with still more earnestness. Then, in a challenging tone, as if addressing the world at large, “I guess ‘t ain’t nobody’s business but our’n.”

Ann looked at him and smiled trustfully.

After a while he began to laugh.

“I’m thinkin’ of your Aunt Mandany when she reads that letter,” he explained.