Well, sir, would you believe it?—­his face fell like a cook-book cake.  That kind of chance wa’n’t what he was looking for.  He shuffled and hitched around, and finally he says:  “I’ll—­Ill consider your offer,” he says.

That was too many for me.  “Well, I’ll be yardarmed!” says I, and went off and left him “considering.”  I don’t know what his considerations amounted to.  All I know is that next day they took him to the poorhouse.

And from now on this yarn has got to be more or less hearsay.  I’ll have to put this and that together, like the woman that made the mince meat.  Some of the facts I got from a cousin of Deborah Badger’s, some of them I wormed out of Asaph himself one time when he’d had a jug come down from the city and was feeling toler’ble philanthropic and conversationy.  But I guess they’re straight enough.

Seems that, while I was down notifying Blueworthy, Cap’n Poundberry had gone over to the poorhouse to tell the Widow Badger about her new boarder.  The widow was glad to hear the news.

“He’ll be somebody to talk to, at any rate,” says she.  “Poor old Betsy Mullen ain’t exactly what you’d call company for a sociable body.  But I’ll mind what you say, Cap’n Benijah.  It takes more than a slick tongue to come it over me.  I’ll make that lazy man work or know the reason why.”

So when Asaph arrived—­per truck wagon—­at three o’clock the next afternoon, Mrs. Badger was ready for him.  She didn’t wait to shake hands or say:  “Glad to see you.”  No, sir!  The minute he landed she sent him out by the barn with orders to chop a couple of cords of oak slabs that was piled there.  He groaned and commenced to develop lumbago symptoms, but she cured ’em in a hurry by remarking that her doctor’s book said vig’rous exercise was the best physic, for that kind of disease, and so he must chop hard.  She waited till she heard the ax “chunk” once or twice, and then she went into the house, figgering that she’d gained the first lap, anyhow.

But in an hour or so it come over her all of a sudden that ’twas awful quiet out by the woodpile.  She hurried to the back door, and there was Ase, setting on the ground in the shade, his eyes shut and his back against the chopping block, and one poor lonesome slab in front of him with a couple of splinters knocked off it.  That was his afternoon’s work.

Maybe you think the widow wa’n’t mad.  She tip-toed out to the wood-pile, grabbed her new boarder by the coat collar and shook him till his head played “Johnny Comes Marching Home” against the chopping block.

“You lazy thing, you!” says she, with her eyes snapping.  “Wake up and tell me what you mean by sleeping when I told you to work.”

“Sleep?” stutters Asaph, kind of reaching out with his mind for a life-preserver.  “I—­I wa’n’t asleep.”

Well, I don’t think he had really meant to sleep.  I guess he just set down to think of a good brand new excuse for not working, and kind of drowsed off.