Part 22

“Oh no. He was very persistent at Cartersville, but I refused him there for the last time. There is a rich old maid in the town who is dead in love with him and admires his preaching extravagantly. He showed me his worst side when I gave him his final answer. He told me she had money and would marry him and that he was going to propose to her. Do you think I could have lived with a creature like that, after--after--”

She went no further. Floyd drew her into his arms. Her head rested on his shoulder, his eyes feasting on her beautiful flushed face.

“After what?” he said. “Say it, darling--say it!”

“After knowing you,” she said, turning her face so that he could not see her eyes. “Nelson, I knew all along that you would grow to be the good, strong man you have become.”

“You made me all I am,” he said, caressingly. “You and Pole Baker. Darling, let's go tell him.”

Floyd walked home with Cynthia half an hour later and left her at the door. She went into her mother's room, and, finding the old woman awake, she told her of the engagement.

There was no light in the room save that of the moonbeams falling through the windows. Mrs. Porter sat up in her bed. For a moment she was silent, and Cynthia wondered what she would say.

“I'm glad, very glad,” Mrs. Porter said, huskily. “I was afraid I'd ruined all your chances. I see my mistake now. I misjudged him. Cynthia, I reckon my mind was really upset. I took a wrong view of the whole thing, and now”--the old woman's voice broke--“and now I suppose you and he will always hate me.”

“Oh, mother, don't talk that way!” Cynthia sat down on the bed, put her arm about her mother, and kissed her. “After all, it was for the best. I didn't want to marry that way--this will be so much more satisfactory.”

“That's certainly true,” said Mrs. Porter, slightly mollified. “I was wrong, but, in the long run, it is better as it is.”

The next morning after breakfast Mrs. Porter told Nathan the news as he stood out under an apple-tree sharpening a wooden tooth for his big triangular harrow.

“I knowed she'd yank 'im,” he chuckled. “He certainly was the king-fish o' these matrimonial waters, an' with all the fishin'-poles along the bank, it jest tuck Nathan Porter's clear-headed daughter to jerk the hook into his gills. But you mighty nigh spiled it with yore everlastin' suspicions an' the long-legged galoot that you kept danglin' 'fore the'r eyes.”

THE END