“Mandy,” said he, “I calc’late you noticed I been comin’ around here consid’able.”

“You have—­seems as though,” she said, and blushed.  It was coming.  She recognized the signs.

“I been a-comin’ on purpose,” said Scattergood.

“Do tell,” said Mandy.

“Yes, ma’am.  It’s like this:  I own a hardware store and some other prop’ty; not a heap, ma’am, but some.  It’s gittin’ to be more.  I calculate, some day, to be wuth consid’able.  When a man gits to this p’int, he ought to have him a wife, eh?”

Mandy made no reply.

“So,” said Scattergood, “I took to lookin’ around a bit, and of all the girls there was, Mandy, it looked to me like you would be the only one to make the kind of a wife I want.  That’s honest.  Yes, sir.  Says I to myself, ‘Mandy Randle’s the one for me.’  So I washed up the buggy and hitched up the horse and come right out.  I been comin’ ever since, because that there first impression of mine has been bore out by facts....  I’m askin’ you, Mandy, will you be Missis Baines?”

“You’re stiddy and savin’—­and makin’,” said Mandy.  “Add what you got to what I got, and we’ll be pretty well off.  And I aim to help take care of it.”

“I aim to have you help,” said Scattergood.  “But, Mandy, I don’t want you scrimpin’ and savin’ too much.  I want my wife should have as good as the best, and be looked up to by the best.  The day’ll come, Mandy, when we’ll keep a hired girl!”

“No extravagances, Scattergood, till I say we kin afford it....  And, Scattergood, you got to promise not to make no important move without consultin’ me.  I got a head for business.”

“Mandy,” said Scattergood, “you and me is equal partners.”

Which, say both tradition and history, is how the arrangement worked out.  Mandy and Scattergood were equal partners.  Scattergood was to learn through the years that Mandy’s was a good head for business, and, though business men who came to deal with Scattergood in the future sometimes laughed when they found Mandy present at their conferences, they never laughed but once....  And, though Scattergood’s proffer of marriage had not been couched in fervent terms of love, nor had Mandy fallen on his overbroad bosom with rapture, theirs was a married life to be envied by most, for there was between them perfect trust, sincere affection, and wisest forbearance.  For forty years Scattergood and Mandy lived together as man and wife, and at the end both could look back through the intimate years and say of the other that he had chosen well his mate.

It may be thought that this bit of romance is dropped in here by legend and history merely to amuse, or as a side light on the character of Scattergood Baines.  This is not so.  We are forced by the facts to regard the matter as an integral part of the business transaction related in this narrative.  Not a minor part, not an important part, but perhaps the deciding factor....