you'd be honored," put in Rube, speaking for the first time.

Mrs. Rickards laughingly nodded.

Ma sighed.

"Guess Seth has queer notions. Mighty queer. I 'low, knowin' him as I do,
I could say right here that that boy 'ud ask her right off, only fer her
friends an' her dollars. He's a foolhead, some."

Mrs. Rickards laughed again.

"In England these things are usually an inducement," she said
significantly.

"Seth's a man," said Ma with some pride. "Seth's real honest, an'--an',
far be it for me to say it, he's consequent a foolhead. What's dollars
when folks love? Pshaw! me an' Rube didn't think o' no dollars."

"Guess we hadn't no dollars to think of, Ma," murmured Rube in a ponderous
aside.

"Wal? An' if we had?" Ma smiled defiantly at her "old man."

"Wal, mebbe we'd 'a' tho't of 'em."

The farmwife turned away in pretended disgust.

"And you don't think anything will come of it?" suggested Mrs. Rickards,
taking the opportunity of returning to the matter under discussion.

Ma's eyes twinkled.

"Ther' ain't no sayin'," she said. "Mebbe it's best left to Rosie." She
glanced again at her sick husband. "Y' see, men mostly has notions, an'
some are ter'ble slow. But they're all li'ble to act jest so, ef the
woman's the right sort. Guess it ain't no use in old folks figgerin' out
fer young folks. The only figgerin' that counts is what they do fer
themselves."

"I believe you're right," responded Mrs. Rickards, wondering where the
farmwife had acquired her fund of worldly wisdom. Ma's gentle shrewdness
overshadowed any knowledge she had acquired living the ordinary social
life that had been hers in England.

Ma's worldly wisdom, however, was all on the surface. She knew Seth, and
she knew Rosebud. She had watched their lives with loving eyes, prompted
by a great depth of sympathy. And all she had seen had taught her that
both were capable of managing their own affairs, and, for the rest, her
optimism induced the belief that all would come right in the end. And it
was out of this belief she reassured her new-made friend.

Meanwhile the little blind god was carrying on his campaign with all the
cunning and crushing strategy for which he is justly renowned. There is no
power such as his in all the world. What he sets out to do he accomplishes
with a blissful disregard for circumstances. Where obstacles refuse to
melt at his advance, he adopts the less comfortable, but none the less
effective, manner of br