When visiting the farm, an event which occurred about every two weeks, Ralph constantly importuned Mary to name an early day for their marriage.

Mary, with a young girl’s impulsiveness, had given her heart unreservedly into the keeping of Ralph Jackson, her first sweetheart.  Mary was not naturally cold or unresponsive, neither was she lacking in passion.  She had had a healthy girlhood, and a wholesome home life.  She had been taught the conventional ideals of the marriage relations that have kept the race strong throughout the centuries.  Mary possessed great strength of character and fine moral courage.  Frequently, not wishing to show her real feeling for the young man; too well poised to be carried off into the wrong channel, defended and excused by many over-sentimental and light-headed novelists of the day, she sometimes appeared almost indifferent to the impetuous youth with warm, red blood leaping in his veins, who desired so ardently to possess her.

Mary’s Aunt had taught her the sanctity of parenthood, also that women are not always the weaker sex.  There are times when they must show their superiority to “mere man” in being the stronger of the two, mentally if not physically, and Ralph Jackson knew when he called Mary “wife” she would endow him with all the wealth of her pure womanhood, sacredly kept for the clean-souled young man, whose devotion she finally rewarded by promising to marry him the second week in October.

Sibylla Linsabigler, a good but ignorant girl, accustomed to hearing her elder brothers speak slightingly regarding the sanctity of love and marriage, was greatly attached to Mary, whom she admired exceedingly, and looked up to almost as a superior being.  She unconsciously imitated many of Mary’s ways and mannerisms, and sought to adopt her higher ideals of life and standard of morals.

One Sunday, as Jake Crouthamel was spending the evening with Sibylla, as was his usual custom, he attempted some slight familiarity, which annoyed Sibylla greatly.  Jake, noticing the young girl’s displeasure at his action, remarked, “I think me Sibylla, you are stuck up yet” (a grave fault in the Bucks County farm hand’s opinion).

“No, Chake,” Sibylla replied, “I ain’t, but Mary, she say a man gives a girl more respect what keeps herself to herself before she is married, and I lofe you Chake and want that you respect me if we marry.”

Fritz and Elizabeth Schmidt, on hearing the news of Mary’s approaching marriage, promptly begged the privilege of decorating the old farm house parlor for the expected ceremony.  They scoured the surrounding woods and countryside for decorations; along old stone fences and among shrubbery by the roadside they gathered large branches of Bitter Sweet.  Its racemes of orange-colored fruit, which later in the season becomes beautiful, when the orange gives place to a brilliant red, the outer covering of the berry turns back upon the stems, forming one of the prettiest pictures imaginable