"No, I wanted to kinder surprise ye; but I got it honest--got it honest; with these two hands, Lil, that'll work for ye all yer life like a nigger, if ye'll only come 'long with me and never go gallavantin' any more."
"And won't you ask me any questions or allow them--at home, Dick--to ask any, and take me just as I am?"
"Just as ye are; fur better, or fur wus, Lil."
"And marry me here, now, before we go home?"
"Marry ye, Lil? I'd marry ye if I'd a found ye in a----; I won't give it a name, Lil. I didn't to them, and I won't to you."
She gave him her hand as firmly and frankly as though she had been a pure woman, and said, "I'm yours, Dick. We'll be married here, to-morrow."
She took charge of all the arrangements; called a cab which took them to the Michigan Exchange; sent Dick off to his room with orders to secure a license the first thing in the morning; wrote two notes to a certain person, one addressed to Mother Blake, and the other to _his_ post-office box, ordering them posted that night; and went to her room to sleep the sleep of the just, which, contrary to general belief, also often comes to the unjust.
Early in the morning, Dick came with the license and suggested securing the services of a preacher; but Lilly said that she had arranged that matter already, and had got a clergyman who, she was sure, would not disappoint them; and promptly at two o'clock in the afternoon courteously admitted the Rev. Mr. Bland, whom she had given the choice of officiating or an exposure, and who performed the ceremony in a pale, trembling way as the wicked old light gleamed in her great, gray eyes, and the swift shuttles of color played over her curled lip.
That night found the newly-wedded couple whirling back to Kalamazoo, where they arrived the next morning and were driven out to the farm-house, where they were joyfully welcomed, and where Dick Hosford in his blunt way announced that he had "found Lil workin' away like a good girl, had married her and took a little bridal 'tower,' and had come back to have no d----d questions asked."
So in a few days the young couple bade the Nettletons good-by and were soon after installed in the pleasant farm-house near Terre Haute, where the years passed on happily enough and brought them competence and contentment and three children, who for a long time never knew the meaning of the strange light in the eyes, or the swift colors on the lips, of the mother who cared for them with an apparent full measure of kindness and affection.