By William James Lampton ( -1917)  
[From Harper's Bazaar, April, 1911; copyright, 1911, by Harper & Brothers; republished by permission.]
 
Of course the Widow Stimson never tried to win Deacon Hawkins, nor any other man, for that matter. A widow doesn't have to try to win a man; she wins without trying. Still, the Widow Stimson sometimes wondered why the deacon was so blind as not to see how her fine farm adjoining his equally fine place on the outskirts of the town might not be brought under one management with mutual benefit to both parties at interest. Which one that management might become was a matter of future detail. The widow knew how to run a farm successfully, and a large farm is not much more difficult to run than one of half the size. She had also had one husband, and knew something more than running a farm successfully. Of all of which the deacon was perfectly well aware, and still he had not been moved by the merging spirit of the age to propose consolidation.
 
This interesting situation was up for discussion at the Wednesday afternoon meeting of the Sisters' Sewing Society.
 
"For my part," Sister Susan Spicer, wife of the Methodist minister, remarked as she took another tuck in a fourteen-year-old girl's skirt for a ten-year-old—"for my part, I can't see why Deacon Hawkins and Kate Stimson don't see the error of their ways and depart from them."
 
"I rather guess she has," smiled Sister Poteet, the grocer's better half, who had taken an afternoon off from the store in order to be present.
 
"Or is willing to," added Sister Maria Cartridge, a spinster still possessing faith, hope, and charity, notwithstanding she had been on the waiting list a long time.
 
"Really, now," exclaimed little Sister Green, the doctor's wife, "do you think it is the deacon who needs urging?"
 
"It looks that way to me," Sister Poteet did not hesitate to affirm.
 
"Well, I heard Sister Clark say that she had heard him call her 'Kitty' one night when they were eating ice-cream at the Mite Society," Sister Candish, the druggist's wife, added to the fund of reliable information on hand.
 
"'Kitty,' indeed!" protested Sister Spicer. "The idea of anybody calling Kate Stimson 'Kitty'! The deacon will talk that way to 'most any woman, but if she let him say it to her more than once, she must be getting mighty anxious, I think."
 
"Oh," Sister Candish hastened to explain, "Sister Clark didn't say she had heard him say it twice.'"
 
"Well, I don't think she heard him say it once," Sister Spicer asserted with confidence.
 
"I don't know about that," Sister Poteet argued. "From all I can see and hear I think Kate Stimson wouldn't object to 'most anything the deacon would say to her, knowing as she does that he ain't going to say anything he shouldn't say."
 
"And isn't saying what he should," added Sister Green, with a sly snicker, which went around the room softly.
 
"But as I was saying—" Sister Spicer began, when Sister Poteet, whose rocker, near the window, commanded a view of the front gate, interrupted with a warning, "'Sh-'sh."
 
"Why shouldn't I say what I wanted to when—" Sister Spicer began.
 
"There she comes now," explained Sister Poteet, "and as I live the deacon drove her here in his sleigh, and he's waiting while she comes in. I wonder what next," and Sister Poteet, in conjunction with the entire society, gasped and held their eager breaths, awaiting the entrance of the subject of conversation.
 
Sister Spicer went to the front door to let her in, and she was greeted with the greatest cordiality by everybody.
 
"We were just talking about you and wondering why you were so late coming," cried Sister Poteet. "Now take off your things and make up for lost time. There's a pair of pants over there to be cut down to fit that poor little Snithers boy."
 
The excitement and curiosity of the society were almost more than could be borne, but never a sister let on that she knew the deacon was at the gate waiting. Indeed, as far as the widow could discover, there was not the slightest indication that anybody had ever heard there was such a person as the deacon in existence.
 
"Oh," she chirruped, in the liveliest of humors, "you will have to excuse me for today. Deacon Hawkins overtook me on the way here, and here said I had simply got to go sleigh-riding with him. He's waiting out at the gate now."
 
"Is that so?" exclaimed the society unanimously, and rushed to the window to see if it were really true.
 
"Well, did you ever?" commented Sister Poteet, generally.
 
"Hardly ever," laughed the widow, good-naturedly, "and I don't want to lose the chance. You know Deacon Hawkins isn't asking somebody every day to go sleighing with him. I told him I'd go if he would bring me around here to let you know what had become of me, and so he did. Now, good-by, and I'll be sure to be present at the next meeting. I have to hurry because he'll get fidgety."
 
The widow ran away like a lively schoolgirl. All the sisters watched her get into the sleigh with the deacon, and resumed the previous discussion with greatly increased interest.
 
But little recked the widow and less recked the deacon. He had bought a new horse and he wanted the widow's opinion of it, for the Widow Stimson was a competent judge of fine horseflesh. If Deacon Hawkins had one insatiable ambition it was to own a horse which could fling its heels in the face of the best that Squire Hopkins drove. In his early manhood the deacon was no deacon by a great deal. But as the years gathered in behind him he put off most of the frivolities of youth and held now only to the one of driving a fast horse. No other man in the county drove anything faster except Squire Hopkins, and him the deacon had not been able to throw the dust over. The deacon would get good ones, but somehow never could he find one that the squire didn't get a better. The squire had also in the early days beaten the deacon in the race for a certain pretty girl he dreamed about. But the girl and the squire had lived happily ever after and the deacon, being a philosopher, might have forgotten the squire's superiority had it been manifested in this one regard only. But in horses, too—that graveled the deacon.
 
"How much did you give for him?" was the widow's first query, after they had reached a stretch of road that was good going and the deacon had let him out for a length or two.
 
"Well, what do you suppose? You're a judge."
 
"More than I would give, I'll bet a cookie."
 
"Not if you was as anxious as I am to show Hopkins that he can't drive by everything on the pike."
 
"I thought you loved a good horse because he was a good horse," said the widow, rather disapprovingly.
 
"I do, but I could love him a good deal harder if he would stay in front of Hopkins's best."
 
"Does he know you've got this one?"
 
"Yes, and he's been blowing round town that he is waiting to pick me up on the road some day and make my five hundred dollars look like a pewter quarter."
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