“Mother,” said Albert, when they were gone, “is Katy going to be married in the spring?”

“Why, how should I know?” queried Mrs. Plausaby, as she adjusted her collar, the wide collar of that day, and set her breastpin before the glass.  “How should I know?  Katy has never told me.  There’s a young man hangs round here Sundays, and goes boating and riding with her, and makes her presents, and walks with her of evenings, and calls her his pet and his darling and all that kind of nonsense, and I half-suspect”—­here she took out her breastpin entirely and began over again—­“I half-suspect he’s in earnest.  But what have I got to do with it?  Kate must marry for herself.  I did twice, and done pretty well both times.  But I can’t see to Kate’s beaux.  Marrying, my son, is a thing everybody must attend to personally for themselves.  At least, so it seems to me.”  And having succeeded in getting her ribbon adjusted as she wanted it, Mrs. Plausaby looked at herself in the glass with an approving conscience.

“But is Kate going to be married in the spring?” asked Albert.

“I don’t know whether she will have her wedding in the spring or summer.  I can’t bother myself about Kate’s affairs.  Marrying is a thing that everybody must attend to personally for themselves, Albert.  If Kate gets married, I can’t help it; and I don’t know as there’s any great sin in it.  You’ll get married yourself some day.”

“Did fa—­did Mr. Plausaby promise Katy some lots?”

“Law, no!  Every lot he sells ’most is sold for Kate’s lot.  It’s a way he has.  He knows how to deal with these sharks.  If you want any trading done, Albert, you let Mr. Plausaby do it for you.”

“But, mother, that isn’t right.”

“You’ve got queer notions, Albert.  You’ll want us all to quit eating meat, I suppose.  Mr. Plausaby said last night you’d be cheated out of your eyes before you’d been here a month, if you stuck to your ideas of things.  You see, you don’t understand sharks.  Plausaby does.  But then that is not my lookout.  I have all I can do to attend to myself.  But Mr. Plausaby does know how to manage sharks.”

The more Albert thought the matter over, the more he was convinced that Mr. Plausaby did know how to manage sharks.  He went out and examined the stakes, and found that block 26 did not contain the oak, but was much farther down in the slough, and that the corner lots that were to have been Katy’s wedding portion stretched quite into the peat bog, and further that if the Baptist University should stand on block 27, it would have a baptistery all around it.

CHAPTER VI.

LITTLE KATY’S LOVER.

Katy was fifteen and a half, according to the family Bible.  Katy was a woman grown in the depth and tenderness of her feeling.  But Katy wasn’t twelve years of age, if measured by the development of her discretionary powers.  The phenomenon of a girl in intellect with a woman’s passion is not an uncommon one.  Such girls are always attractive—­feeling in woman goes for so much more than thought.  And such a girl-woman as Kate has a twofold hold on other people—­she is loved as a woman and petted as a child.