“You shall not go back to that wretched drudgery,” said Mr. Longworth, in his impetuous, nervous manner.  “Do not imagine you are ever to do it again.  Tell me,” he said, lowering his voice, and leaning toward me so that he could see my face, shaded by the vine-hung trellis.  “Could you be happy—­”

We heard Mr. Hopper moving around the room uneasily, and instinctively Mr. Longworth paused.

“Ma,” said the old man, a trifle reproachfully, “I’m afraid you don’t try to make it cheerful for them young folks.  Why don’t you go out and set for a spell?  I guess I’ll go.”

“Stay where you are, Joseph,” said Mrs. Hopper, in loud tones of disapproval, that were wafted through the open window to us.  “Did we want the old folks forever runnin’ after us before we was married?” Mr. Longworth tried not to steal a mirthful glance at me, but he found it hard to resist.  “Oh! pshaw, Ma,” replied the old man gently.  “There ain’t none of that goin’ on.  He ain’t a marryin’ man,” and we heard his slippered feet pattering softly over the oil-clothed entry, and his mild face beamed on us through the net door, which he held open for a moment before he came out and seated himself in the rocking-chair.

“Well, now, this is comfortable,” he said, with a cheerfully social air.  “I can tell you this is a night for authors.  Here’s a chance for poetry!” with a wave of his thin, weather-worn hand toward the peaceful fields.  “Made any this evenin’?” he inquired.  “Ain’t? well, I guess you’ll never come across a more inspirin’ night,” he said, with some disappointment.  “I expected likely you’d have some you could say right off.  Fer a plain farmer, I don’t s’pose there’s anybody fonder’n I am of verses,” he said, musingly.  “I b’lieve I told ye ’twas in our family.  I wish you could have met my uncle, Mis’ Marriot, died on his ninety-second birthday, and had writ a long piece on each birthday for a matter of forty year.  That ther man was talented, I tell ye.  There wasn’t no occasion he couldn’t write a piece onto.  Why, the night Ma and me was married (we was married in Ma’s sister’s parlor) we hadn’t more’n turned ’round from the minister, ‘n before anybody had a chance t’ congratulate us, uncle, he steps right up in front of us, an’ sez he: 

  ‘Now you are married, an’ man an’ wife
  May you live happy this mortial life,
  An’ when your days on this earth is o’er
  May you both meet together on the evergreen shore.’

“It come to him, jus’ come to him that minute, like a flash,” said the old man, reflectively, the pathos of his sweet, tremulous voice lending unspeakable melody to the preposterous stanza.

Mr. Hopper had evidently settled himself for the remainder of the evening, and after a time Mr. Longworth bade us good-night, and went across to the Bangs homestead.

All that night I tossed about on my uncomfortable feather-bed, or rather, when I found I could not sleep, I rose after a time, and wrapped in my dressing-gown, I sat by my tiny window, watching the shadows of the wind-blown locust-boughs on the moonlit grass below, full of the dreams which are the stuff that romances are made of, and which, though I had often used them as “material,” I had never known myself before; shy and tender dreams they were, that glorified that summer night, and kept me wakeful until dawn.