“You want to marry _me_?” gasped Mrs. Strang. The dark, handsome features flushed yet deeper; her bosom heaved.
“You’ve struck it! I do want ter, thet’s plain!” He rose to his feet, and threw his head back and his chest forward. “You’ll allus find me straightforward, Mrs. Strang. I don’t beat about the bush, hey? But I shouldn’t hev spoke so prematoor if you hedn’t druv me to it by your mistake ’bout Harriet. Es if I could marry a giddy young gal with her head full o’ worldly thoughts! Surely you must hev seen how happy I’ve been to hev you here, arnin’ money to pay off your mortgage. Not that I’d a-called it in anyways! What’s thet thar little sum to me? But I was thinkin’ o’ _your_ feelin’s; how onhappy you would be to owe me the money. And then thinkin’ how to do somethin’ for your children, I saw it couldn’t be done without takin’ you into account. A mother clings to her children. Nater is nater, I allus thinks. And the more I took you into account, the more you figured up. There’s a great mother, I thinks; there’s a God-fearin’ woman. An’ a God-fearin’ woman is a crown to her husban’, hey? If ever I do bring myself to marry agen, thet’s the woman for my money, I vow! When I say money, it’s on’y speakin’ in parables like, ’cause I’m not thet sort o’ man. There _air_ men as ’ud come to you an’ say, ‘See here, Mrs. Strang, I’ve got fifty acres of fust-class interval-land, an’ a thousand acres of upland and forest-land, an’ thirty head o’ cattle, an’ a hundred sheep a’most, an’ a tannery thet, with the shoemaker’s shop attached, brings me in two hundred pound a year, an’ a grist-mill, an’ I carry the local mail, an’ I’ve shares and mortgages thet would make you open your eyes, I tell you, an’ I’m free from encumbrances e’en a’most, whereas you’ve got half a dozen.’ But what does Deacon Hailey say? He says, jest put all thet outer your mind, Mrs. Strang, an’ think on’y o’ the man--think o’ the man, with no one to devote himself to.”
He took her hand, and she did not withdraw it. Emotion made her breathing difficult. In the new light in which he appeared to her she saw that he was still a proper man--straight and tall and sturdy and bright of eye, despite his grizzled beard and hair.
