“You’d better give him some supper—­he looks almost played out,” observed Abner from a corner of the hearth, where he sat smoking with his head hanging on his chest.

Though she might harrow her son’s soul, Sarah was incapable of denying him food, so rising from her knees, she unpinned her skirt, and brought him coffee and broiled herring from the stove where they had been keeping hot.

“Where’s Archie?” asked Abel, while she plied him with corn muffins.

“Courtin’, I reckon, though he’d best be down yonder in the swamp settin’ old hare traps.  I never saw sech courtin’ as you all’s anyhow,” she concluded.  “It don’t seem to lead nowhar, nor to end in nothin’ except itself.  That’s what this here ever-lastin’ education has done for you, Abel—­if you hadn’t had those books to give you something to think about, you’d have been married an’ settled a long time befo’ now.  Yo’ grandpa over thar was steddyin’ about raisin’ a family before he was twenty.”

On either side of the stove, grandfather and grandmother nodded like an ancient Punch and Judy who were at peace only when they slept.  Grandfather’s pipe had gone out in his hand, and from grandmother’s lap a ball of crimson yarn had rolled on the rag carpet before the fire.  Twenty years ago she had begun knitting an enormous coverlet in bright coloured squares, and it was still unfinished, though the strips, packed away in camphor, filled a chest in Sarah’s store closet.

“You wouldn’t like any girl I’d marry,” he retorted with a feeble attempt at mirth.  “If I tried to put your advice into practice there’d be trouble as sure as shot.”

“No, thar wouldn’t—­not if I picked her out,” she returned.

“Great Scott!  Won’t you let me choose my own wife even?” he exclaimed, with a laugh in which there was an ironic humour.  The soft pressure of Molly’s fingers was still on his hand, and he saw her face looking up at him, gentle and beseeching, as she had looked when she offered her lips to his kiss.  Above the yearning of his heart there rose now the decision of his judgment—­and this had surrendered her to Mr. Mullen!  Some rigid strain of morality, inherited from Sarah and therefore continually at war with her, caused him to torture himself into a mental recognition that her choice was for the best.

“That man never walked that had sense enough to pick out a wife,” rejoined Sarah.  “To think of a great hulkin’ fellow like you losin’ yo’ sense over a half mad will-o’-the-wisp that don’t even come of decent people.  If she hadn’t had eyes as big as saucers, do you reckon you’d ever have turned twice to look at her?”

“For God’s sake don’t talk about her—­she’s not going to marry me,” he responded, and the admission of the truth he had so often repeated in his own mind caused a pang of disbelief.

“I’d like to know why she ain’t?” snorted Sarah indignantly, “does she think she’s goin’ to get a better catch in this neighbourhood?”