“Sure!” said Red, and went to the door.  There stood two women of that indefinite period between forty and sixty, very decently dressed and with some agitation visible in the way they fussily adjusted various parts of their attire.

They started at the sudden spectacle of the huge man who said pleasantly, “Howderdo, ladies!”

“Why, how do you do?” replied the taller instantly, and in a voice she had never heard before.  “I hope you’re well, sir?” A remark which filled her with surprise.

“Thanks—­I’m able to assume the perpendicular, as you can see,” responded Red with a handsome smile of welcome.  “How do you find yourself?”

“I’m pretty well,” said the flustered lady.  “How do you do?”

“Durned if we ain’t right back where we started from,” mourned Red to himself.  “If it’s one of the customs of this country saying ‘howderdo’ an hour at a stretch, I pass it up.”  Aloud, he said, “Coming along fine—­how’s your father?” “Cuss me if I don’t shift the cut a little, anyhow,” he added mentally.

“Why, he’s very well indeed!” exclaimed the lady with fervor.  “How—­” She got no further on the query, for the other woman interrupted in a tone of scandal.  “Mary Ann Demilt!  How can you talk like that!  Your father’s been dead this five year last August!”

The horror of the moment was broken by the appearance of Miss Mattie, crying hospitably on seeing the visitors, “Why, Mary and Pauline!  How do you do?”

The shorter one—­Pauline—­looked up and said sharply, “We’re well enough, Mattie.”  She was weary of the form.

“Come right in,” said Miss Mattie.  “You’re just in time for dinner.”

There was a great protest at this.  They “hadn’t a moment to spare,” they were “just going down to the corner, and had stopped to say,” etc., etc.

“You’ve got to help me,” said Miss Mattie.  “Will here has invited the boys who are working for him to stay to dinner, and it won’t be any more than Christian for you to help me out.”

“Ladies!” said Red.  “If you don’t want to starve a man who’s deserving of a better fate, take off your fixings and come out to dinner.  No,” he continued to their protests, which he observed were growing weaker.  “It’s no trouble at all:  there’s plenty for everybody—­come one, come all, this house shall fly, clean off its base as soon as I—­Now for Heaven’s sake, ladies, it’s all settled—­come on.”

Whereat they laughed nervously, and took off their hats.

It was a jolly dinner party.  The young fellows Red had picked up in the blacksmith’s shop were not the ordinary quality of loungers.  They were boys of good country parentage, with a common school education, who, unfortunately, could find nothing to do but the occasional odd job.  Of course it would not take long to transform them into common n’er-do-wells, but now they were merely thoughtless boys.