“Thet’s right. Give her her head a bit. It don’t do to tie a grown-up gal to her mammy’s apron-strings. You may take a horse to the water, but you kin’t make her drink, hey? No, no, don’t you worry Harriet with forcin’ husbands on her.”
“I--I--kinder--thought--” gasped Mrs. Strang, looking handsomer than ever in the rosy glow of confusion.
“You kinder thought--” echoed Old Hey, spitting accurately under the stove.
“Thet’s so. I guessed she could live here more comfortable than to home. I don’t ask no reward; ‘the widder and the orphan,’ as Scripter says--hey?”
“Hey?” shouted the deacon. “Marriage? Me? Well, I swow! Me, whose Susan hes only been dead five months! A proper thing to suspec’ me of! Why, all the neighbors ’ud be sayin’, ‘Susan is hardly cold in her grave afore he’s thinkin’ of another.’”
“I beg your pardin,” said the abashed woman.
“An’ well you may, I do declare! Five months arter the funeral, indeed! Why, ten months at least must elapse! But you teetotally mistook my meanin’, Mrs. Strang; it’s a woman _I_’d be wantin’--a woman with a heart an’ a soul, not an unbroken filly. All I was a-thinkin’ of was, Could thet thar Abner Preep clothe and feed your darter? But I ain’t the man to bear malice; and till you kin feel you kin trust her to him or some other man, my house is open to her. I don’t draw back my offer, and when I made it I was quite aware you would hev to be on the spot, too, to look arter her--hey?”
“Well, you’re not too ole, anyways.” And the deacon smiled again. “A’ready you’re here all day e’en a’most.” Here he half knelt down to attend to the stove, which was smoking very slightly. “It wouldn’t be much of a change to sleep here, hey?”
“Oh, but you’re forgittin’ the other children, deacon.”
“Deacon Hailey ain’t the man to forgit anythin’, I guess,” he said, over his shoulder. “Afore he talks he thinks. He puts everythin’ in the tan-pit an’ lets it soak, hey? Is it likely I’d take you over here an’ leave the little uns motherless? I never _did_ like this kind of stove.” He fidgeted impatiently with the mechanism at the back, making the iron rattle.
“I--I--don’t--understand,” faltered Mrs. Strang, her heart beginning to beat painfully.
“How you do go on ter-day, Mrs. Strang! When I ain’t talkin’ o’ marriage you jump at it, and when I am you hang back like a mare afore a six-foot dyke. Ah! thet’s better,” and he adjusted the damper noisily, with a great sigh of satisfaction.