When the table had been cleared and everything put away, she resumed her seat, breathing an unconscious sigh as she dropped her hands into her lap. Gilbert felt that he must now speak, and only hesitated while he considered how he could best do so, without touching her secret and mysterious trouble.
"Mother!" he said at last, "I have something to tell you."
"Maybe it'll seem good news to you; but maybe not. I have asked Martha Deane to be my wife!"
He paused, and looked at her. She clasped her hands, leaned forward, and fixed her dark, mournful eyes intently upon his face.
"I have been drawn towards her for a long time," Gilbert continued. "It has been a great trouble to me, because she is so pretty, and withal so proud in the way a girl should be,--I liked her pride, even while it made me afraid,--and they say she is rich also. It might seem like looking too high, mother, but I couldn't help it."
"There's no woman too high for you, Gilbert!" Mary Potter exclaimed. Then she went on, in a hurried, unsteady voice: "It isn't that--I mistrusted it would come so, some day, but I hoped--only for your good, my boy, only for that--I hoped not so soon. You're still young--not twenty-five, and there's debt on the farm;--couldn't you ha' waited a little, Gilbert?"
"I have waited, mother," he said, slightly turning away his head, that he might not see the tender reproach in her face, which her question seemed to imply. "I _did_ wait--and for that reason. I wanted first to be independent, at least; and I doubt that I would have spoken so soon, but there were others after Martha, and that put the thought of losing her into my head. It seemed like a matter of life or death. Alfred Barton tried to keep company with her--he didn't deny it to my face; the people talked of it. Folks always say more than they know, to be sure, but then, the chances were so much against _me,_ mother! I was nigh crazy, sometimes. I tried my best and bravest to be patient, but to-day we were riding alone,--Mark and Sally gone ahead,--and--and then it came from my mouth, I don't know how; I didn't expect it. But I shouldn't have doubted Martha; she let me speak; she answered me--I can't tell you her words, mother, though I'll never forget one single one of 'em to my dying day. She gave me her hand and said she would be true to me forever."
