should think of contracting marriage with a lame potter from
Burslem. Gadzooks! The girl would some day be heiress to ten thousand
pounds or so, and the man she would marry must match her dowry, guinea
for guinea. And another thing: a nephew of Lord Bedford, a rising young
barrister of London, had already asked for her hand.

To be a friend to a likely potter wasn't the same as asking him into the
family!

Josiah's total sum of assurance had been exhausted when he blurted out
his proposal to the proud father; there was now nothing he could do but
to grow first red and then white. He was suppressed, undone, and he
could not think of a thing to say, or an argument to put forth. The air
seemed stifling. He stumbled down the steps and started down the road as
abruptly as he had appeared.

What he would do or where he would go were very hazy propositions in
his mind. He limped along and had gone perhaps a mile. Things were
getting clearer in his mind. His first decision as sanity returned was
that he would ask the first passer-by which way it was to the river.

Now he was getting mad. "A Burslem potter!" that is what the Squire
called him, and a lame one at that! It was a taunt, an epithet, an
insult! To call a person a Burslem potter was to accuse him of being
almost everything that was bad.

The stage did not go until the next day--Josiah had slackened his pace
and was looking about for an inn. He would get supper first anyway, and
then the river--it would only be one Burslem potter less.

And just then there was a faint cry of "Oh, Josiah!" and a vision of
blue. Sarah was right there behind him, all out of breath from running
across the meadows. "Oh, Josiah--I--I just wanted to say that I hate
that barrister! And then you heard papa say that you must match my
dowry, guinea for guinea--I am sorry it is so much, but you can do it,
Josiah, you can do it!"

She held out her hand and Josiah clutched and twisted it, and then
smacked at it, but smacked into space.

And the girl was gone! She was running away from him. He could not hope
to catch her--he was lame, and she was agile as a fawn. She stepped upon
a stile that led over through the meadow, and as she stood there she
waved her hand, and Josiah afterward thought she said, "Match my dowry,
guinea for guinea, Josiah: you can do it, you can do it." Just an
instant she stood there, and then she ran across the meadow and
disappeared amid the oaks.

An old woman came