“There’s no use in your wasting your time keeping company with me, Absalom.  I never intend to marry.  I’ve made up my mind.”

“Is it that your pop won’t leave you, or whatever?”

“I never asked him.  I don’t know what he would say.”

“Mom spoke somepin about mebbe your pop he’d want to keep you at home, you bein’ so useful to him and your mom.  But I sayed when you come eighteen, you’re your own boss.  Ain’t, Tillie?”

“Father probably would object to my marrying because I’m needed at home,” Tillie agreed.  “That’s why they wouldn’t leave me go to school after I was eleven.  But I don’t want to marry.”

“You leave me be your steady friend, Tillie, and I’ll soon get you over them views,” urged Absalom, confidently.

But Tillie shook her head.  “It would just waste your time, Absalom.”

In Canaan Township it would have been considered highly dishonorable for a girl to allow a young man to “sit up with her Sundays” if she definitely knew she would never marry him.  Time meant money, and even the time spent in courting must be judiciously used.

“I don’t mind if I do waste my time settin’ up with you Sundays, Tillie.  I take to you that much, it’s something surprising, now!  Will you give me the dare to come next Sunday?”

“If you don’t mind wasting your time—­” Tillie reluctantly granted.

“It won’t be wasted.  I’ll soon get you to think different to what you think now.  You just leave me set up with you a couple Sundays and see!”

“I know I’ll never think any different, Absalom.  You must not suppose that I will.”

“Is it somepin you’re got ag’in’ me?” he asked incredulously, for he knew he was considered a prize.  “I’m well-fixed enough, ain’t I?  I’d make you a good purvider, Tillie.  And I don’t addict to no bad habits.  I don’t chew.  Nor I don’t drink.  Nor I don’t swear any.  The most I ever sayed when I was spited was ‘confound it.’”

“It isn’t that I have anything against you, Absalom, especially.  But—­look here, Absalom, if you were a woman, would you marry?  What does a woman gain?”

Absalom stared at her in the dusky evening light of the high road.  To ask of his slow-moving brain that it question the foundations of the universe and wrestle with a social and psychological problem like this made the poor youth dumb with bewilderment.

“Why should a woman get married?” Tillie repeated.

“That’s what a woman’s fur,” Absalom found his tongue to say.

“She loses everything and gains nothing.”

“She gets kep’,” Absalom argued.

“Like the horses.  Only not so carefully.  No, thank you, Absalom.  I can keep myself.”

“I’d keep you better ’n your pop keeps you, anyways, Tillie.  I’d make you a good purvider.”

“I won’t ever marry,” Tillie repeated.

“I didn’t know you was so funny,” Absalom sullenly answered.  “You might be glad I want to be your reg’lar friend.”