I'd
marry anyone I'd only just seen? And besides you don't hardly know me."

"But I do know you're the only maid for me, and I can't go back without
you. That's where it's to. When I've been preaching and sweating away
down to the chapel, when I've been shouting and roaring about the
glories of Heaven, I've all the time been thinking of maids' lips and
wondering how I didn't care to go courting. I'm going to have 'ee."

"Thanks," said Jenny loftily. "I seem to come on with the crowd in this
scene. I don't want to marry you."

"I don't know how you can be so crool-hearted as to think of leaving me
go back home along and whenever I see the corn in summer-time keep
thinking of your hair."

"But I'm not struck on you," said Jenny. "You're too old. Besides, it's
soppy to talk like that about my hair when you've never hardly seen it
at all."

Trewhella seemed oblivious to everything but the prosecution of his
suit.

"There's hundreds of maids have said a man was too old. And what is
love? Why, 'tis nothing but a great fire burning and burning in a man's
heart, and if 'tis hot enough, it will light a fire in the woman's
heart."

"Ah, but supposing, like me, she's got a fireproof curtain?" said Jenny
flippantly.

Trewhella looked at her, puzzled by this counter. He perceived, however,
it was hostile to his argument and went on more earnestly than before:

"Yes, but you wouldn't have me lusting after the flesh. I that found the
Lord years ago and kept Him ever since. I that showed fruits of the
Spirit before any of the chaps in the village. I that scat up two apple
orchards so as they shouldn't go to make cider and drunkenness. You
wouldn't have me live all my life in whorage of thoughts."

"Who cares what you do?" said Jenny, getting bored under this weight of
verbiage. "I don't want to marry."

"I've been too quick," said Trewhella. "I've been led away by my
preacher's tongue. But you'll see me there in front of 'ee to-night," he
almost shouted. "You'll see me there gazing at 'ee, and I don't belong
to be bested by nothing. Maid nor bullock. Good night, Miss Raeburn,
I'll be looking after William John."

"Good night," said Jenny pleasantly, relieved by his departure. "I'll
see you in front, then."

She thought as she said this how utterly inappropriate Trewhella and
Corin would look in the stalls of the Orient. She fancied how the girls
would laugh and ask in the wings what those strange figures could be. It