“Ah, you don’t mean it, do you—­about not liking buckwheat cakes?  As for the rest, bein’ a woman, I reckon you would have the washin’ up to attend to just at that time.  I don’t like a woman that sets around idle after supper—­an’ I’m glad you’re one to be brisk an’ busy about the house, though I’m sorry you ain’t over partial to buckwheat.  May I inquire, if you don’t object to tellin’ me, what is yo’ favourite food?”

“It’s hard to say—­I have so many—­bread and jam, I believe.”

“I hope you don’t think I’m too pressin’ on the subject, but ma has always said that there wasn’t any better bond for matrimony than the same taste in food.  Do you think she’s right?”

“I shouldn’t wonder.  She’s had experience anyway.”

“Yes, that’s jest what I tell her—­she’s had experience an’ she ought to know.  Pa and she never had a word durin’ the thirty years of their marriage, an’ she always said she ruled him not with the tongue, but with the fryin’ pan.  I don’t reckon there’s a better cook than ma in this part of the country, do you?”

“I’m quite sure there isn’t.  She has given up her life to it.”

“To be sure she has—­every minute of it, like the woman whose price is above rubies that Mr. Mullen is so fond of preachin’ about.”  For a moment he considered the fact as though impressed anew by its importance.  “I’m glad you feel that way, because ma has always stuck out that you had the makin’ of a mighty fine cook in you.”

“Has she?  That was nice of her, wasn’t it?”

“Well, she wouldn’t have said so if she hadn’t thought it.  It ain’t her way to say pleasant things when she can help it.  You must judge her by her work not by her talk, pa used to say.”

“She’s the kind that doesn’t mind taking trouble for you, I know that about her,” replied Molly, gravely.

“You’re right about that, an’ you’re the same way, I am sure.  I’ve watched you pretty closely with your grandfather.”

“Yes, I believe I am—­with grandfather.”

“‘Twill be the same way when you marry, I was sayin’ as much to ma only yesterday.  ‘She’d be jest as savin’ an’ thrifty as you,’—­I mean, of course, if the right man got you to marry him,—­but ’tis all the same in the end.”  Again he paused, cleared his throat, and swallowed convulsively, “I’ve sometimes felt that I might be the right man, Miss Molly,” he said.

“O Mr. Halloween!”

“Why, I thought you knew I felt so from the way you looked at me.”

“But I can’t help the way I look, can I?”

“Well, I’ve told you now, so it ain’t a secret.  I’ve thought about askin’ you for more than a year—­ever since you smiled at me one Sunday in church while Mr. Mullen was preachin’.”

“Did I?  I’ve quite forgotten it!”

“I suppose you have, seein’ you smile so frequent.  But that put the idea in my head anyway an’ I’ve cared a terrible lot about marryin’ you ever since.”