I laughed at him at first, but he persisted till I was forced to believe him in earnest; and then I told him how foolish he was to fancy an ugly, sallow-looking girl like me, who had no father nor mother, when he might take one of John Mills’s rosy daughters, or go down to Catlettsburg and get somebody whose father would give him a farm already cleared.

“You are laughing at me, Janet,” he said.  “I know I am not smart enough for you, nor hardly fit to keep company with you, now that Hammond has taught you so many things that are proper for a lady to know; but I love you true, and if you can only fancy me, I’ll work so hard that you’ll be able to keep a hired girl and have all your time for reading and going about the woods as you like to do.  And you’ll be in your own house, instead of under Squire Boarders and his sharp-spoken wife.  Couldn’t you fancy me after a while?  I’d do anything you said to make myself agreeable and fit company for you.”

“You are very fit company for me now, Tom,” I said, “and you are of a great deal more use in the world than I am; you know more that is worth knowing than I do.  Only let us be good friends, as we have always been, and do not talk about anything else.”

“I will not talk any more of it now,” said he, “if so be it don’t please you, and if you’ll promise never to say any more to me about the Mills gals, or any of them critters down in Catlettsburg,—­I can’t abide the sight of them,—­and if you’ll let me come and see you all the same, and row you about and take you to the mill when you want flour.”

I held out my hand to Tom with the earnest assurance that I always liked to see him and talk to him, and that there was nobody whom I would sooner ask to do me a kindness.

The poor fellow choked a little as he thanked me, and then, recovering himself, rowed a few strokes in silence, when, looking round as if to assure himself that there was nothing near us but the quiet trees, he said suddenly,—­

“I’ll tell you what, Janet, I’ve a great mind to tell you something, seeing how you’re not a woman that can’t hold her tongue, and then you think so much of Hammond.”

I started with a quick sense of alarm, but Tom went doggedly on.

“You know what a hard winter we’ve had, with this low water and no January rise, and all that ice in the Ohio.  They say they’re starving for coal down in Cincinnati, and here we’ve no end of it stacked up.  Well, Hammond, he’s had hard work enough to keep the men along through the winter.  Many another man would have turned them off, but he wouldn’t do it; so he’s shinned here and shinned there to get money to pay them their wages, and they’ve had scrip, and we’ve fairly brought goods up to the store overland, on horseback and every kind of way, just for their convenience; and now the damned Irish rascals, with some of the Sandy boys for leaders, have made up their minds to strike for higher wages the minute we have