“Do I owe you for anything, Mr. Webb?” she suddenly asked, groping for some clew to this lengthening labyrinthine visit.

He rose and going to the piano raked heavily off of the top of it a glass jar and brought it over to her and resumed his seat with a speaking countenance.

“Cream!” cried Miss Anna, delighted, running her practised eye downward along the bottle to discover where the contents usually began to get blue:  it was yellow to the bottom.  “How much is it?  I’m afraid we are too poor to buy so much cream all at once.”

“It has no price; it is above price.”

“How much is it, Mr. Webb?” she insisted with impatience.

“It is a free gift.”

“Oh, what a beautiful present!” exclaimed Miss Anna, holding it up to the light admiringly.  “How can I ever thank you.”

“Don’t thank me:  you could have the dairy!  You could have the cows, the farm.”

“O dear, no!” cried Miss Anna, “that would be altogether too much!  One bottle goes far beyond all that I ever hoped for.”

“I wish ail women were like you.”

“O dear, no! that would not do at all!  I am an old maid, and women must marry, must, must!  What would become of the world?”

“You need not be an old maid unless you wish.”

“Now, I had never thought of that!” observed Miss Anna, in a very peculiar tone.  “But we’ll not talk about myself; let us talk about yourself.  You are looking extremely well—­now aren’t you?”

“No one has a better right.  It is due you to let you know this.  There’s good timber in me yet.”

“Due me!  I am not interested in timber.”

“Anna,” he said, throwing his arms around one of his knees, “our hour has come—­we need not wait any longer.”

“Wait for what?” inquired Miss Anna, bending toward him with the scrutiny of a near-sighted person trying to make out some looming horror.

“Our marriage.”

Miss Anna rose as by an inward explosion.

“Go, buzzard!”

He kept his seat and stared at her with a dropped jaw.  Habit was powerful in him; and there was something in her anger, in that complete sweeping of him out other way, that recalled the domestic usages of former years and brought to his lips an involuntary time-worn expression: 

“I meant nothing offensive.”

“I do not know what you meant, and I do not care:  go!”

He rose and stood before her, and with a flash of sincere anger he spoke his honest mind:  “It was you who put the notion in my head.  You encouraged me, encouraged me systematically; and now you are pretending.  You are a bad woman.”

“I think I am a bad woman after what has happened to me this morning,” said Miss Anna, dazed and ready to break down.

He hesitated when he reached the door, smarting with his honest hurt; and he paused there and made a request.