hand ag'in; we'll stand by each other faster than ever, now!"

When they stopped at Fairthorn's, the significant pressure of Gilbert's
hand brought a blush into Sally's cheek; but when Mark met Martha with
his tell-tale face, she answered with a proud and tender smile.

Gilbert's first business, after his return, was to have a consultation
with Miss Betsy Lavender, who alone knew of the suspicions attaching to
Alfred Barton. The spinster had, in the mean time, made the matter the
subject of profound and somewhat painful cogitation. She had ransacked
her richly stored memory of persons and events, until her brain was like
a drawer of tumbled clothes; had spent hours in laborious mental
research, becoming so absorbed that she sometimes gave crooked answers
when spoken to, and was haunted with a terrible dread of having thought
aloud; and had questioned the oldest gossips right and left, coming as
near the hidden subject as she dared. When they met, she communicated
the result to Gilbert in this wise:

"'T a'n't agreeable for a body to allow they're flummuxed, but if _I_
a'n't, this time, I'm mighty near onto it. It's like lookin' for a set
o' buttons that'll match, in a box full o' tail-ends o' things. This'n
'd do, and that'n 'd do; but you can't put this'n and that'n together;
and here's got to be square work, everything fittin' tight and hangin'
plumb, or it'll be throwed back onto your hands, and all to be done over
ag'in. I dunno when I've done so much head-work and to no purpose,
follerin' here and guessin' there, and nosin' into everything that's
past and gone; and so my opinion is, whether you like it or not, but
never mind, all the same, I can't do no more than give it, that we'd
better drop what's past and gone, and look a little more into these
present times!"