I’d a receipt for curing hams, as Miss Faith would never let me try, saying the old way were good enough.  However, I resisted.  Says I, very stern, because I felt I’d been wavering, ’Master Dixon, once for all, pig or no pig, I’ll not marry you.  And if you’ll take my advice, you’ll get up off your knees.  The flags is but damp yet, and it would be an awkward thing to have rheumatiz just before winter.’  With that he got up, stiff enough.  He looked as sulky a chap as ever I clapped eyes on.  And as he were so black and cross, I thought I’d done well (whatever came of the pig) to say ‘No’ to him.  ‘You may live to repent this,’ says he, very red.  ’But I’ll not be hard upon ye, I’ll give you another chance.  I’ll let you have the night to think about it, and I’ll just call in to hear your second thoughts, after chapel, to-morrow.’  Well now! did ever you hear the like!  But that is the way with all of them men, thinking so much of theirselves, and that it’s but ask and have.  They’ve never had me, though; and I shall be sixty-one next Martinmas, so there’s not much time left for them to try me, I reckon.  Well! when Jeremiah said that he put me up more than ever, and I says, ’My first thoughts, second thoughts, and third thoughts is all one and the same; you’ve but tempted me once, and that was when you spoke of your pig.  But of yoursel’ you’re nothing to boast on, and so I’ll bid you good night, and I’ll keep my manners, or else, if I told the truth, I should say it had been a great loss of time listening to you.  But I’ll be civil—­so good night.’  He never said a word, but went off as black as thunder, slamming the door after him.  The master called me in to prayers, but I can’t say I could put my mind to them, for my heart was beating so.  However, it was a comfort to have had an offer of holy matrimony; and though it flustered me, it made me think more of myself.  In the night, I began to wonder if I’d not been cruel and hard to him.  You see, I were feverish-like; and the old song of Barbary Allen would keep running in my head, and I thought I were Barbary, and he were young Jemmy Gray, and that maybe he’d die for love of me; and I pictured him to mysel’, lying on his death-bed, with his face turned to the wall ‘wi’ deadly sorrow sighing,’ and I could ha’ pinched mysel’ for having been so like cruel Barbary Allen.  And when I got up next day, I found it hard to think on the real Jerry Dixon I had seen the night before, apart from the sad and sorrowful Jerry I thought on a-dying, when I were between sleeping and waking.  And for many a day I turned sick, when I heard the passing bell, for I thought it were the bell loud-knelling which were to break my heart wi’ a sense of what I’d missed in saying ‘No’ to Jerry, and so idling him with cruelty.  But in less than a three week, I heard parish bells a-ringing merrily for a wedding; and in the course of the morning, some one says to me, ’Hark! how the bells is ringing for Jerry Dixon’s wedding!’ And, all on a sudden, he changed back again from a heart-broken young fellow, like Jemmy Gray, into a stout, middle-aged man, ruddy-complexioned, with a wart on his left cheek like life!”