“An’ if you kin’t give him devotion in return, jest you say so plump; take a lesson from his straightforwardness, hey? Don’t you think o’ your mortgage, or his money-bags, ’cause money ain’t happiness, hey? An’ don’t you go sacrificin’ yourself for your children, thinkin’ o’ poor little Billy’s future, ’cause I don’t hold with folks sacrificin’ themselves wholesale; self-preservation is the fust law of nater, hey? an’ it wouldn’t be fair to _me_. All ye hev to arx yourself is jest this: Kin you make Deacon Hailey happy in his declinin’ years?” He drew himself up to his full height without letting go her hand, and his eyes looked into hers. “Yes, I say declinin’ years--there’s no deception, the ’taters air all up to sample. How ole might you think me?”
“Nearer sixty!” he replied, triumphantly. “But I hev my cold bath every mornin’--I’m none o’ your shaky boards that fly into etarnal bits at the fust clout, hey?”
“But you hev been married twice,” she faltered.
“So will _you_ be--when you marry me, hey?” And the deacon lifted her chin playfully. “We’re neither on us rough timber--we’ve both hed our wainy edges knocked off, hey? My father hed three wives--and he’s still hale and hearty--a widower o’ ninety. Like father like son, hey? He’s a deacon, too, down to Digby.”
As Deacon Hailey spoke of his father he grew middle-aged to Mrs. Strang’s vision. But she found nothing to reply, and her thoughts drifted off inconsequently on the rivulet of sacred music.
“But Ruth won’t like it,” she murmured at last.
“Hey? What’s Ruth got to say in the matter? I guess Ruth knows her fifth commandment, an’ so do I. My father is the on’y person whose blessin’ I shall arx on my ’spousals. I allus make a pint o’ thet, you may depend.”
The pathetic picture of Deacon Hailey beseeching his father’s blessing knocked off ten years more from his age, and it was a young and ardent wooer whose grasp tightened momently on Mrs. Strang’s hand.
“We might go to see him together,” he said. “It’s an everlastin’ purty place, Digby.”
“I’d rayther see Halifax,” said Mrs. Strang, weakly. In the whirl of her thoughts Ruth’s tinkling tune seemed the only steady thing in the universe. Oh, if Ruth would only play something bearing on the situation, so that Heaven might guide her in this sudden and fateful crisis!