d Sally
lowered her eyes.

"Don't you think you could get anybody if you tried?" she inquired.

"The trouble," said Hawtrey gravely, "is that I have so little to offer.
It's a poor place, and I'm almost afraid, Sally, that I'm rather a poor
farmer. As you have once or twice pointed out, I don't stay with things.
Still, it might be different if there was any particular reason why I
should."

He rose, and crossing the room, stood close beside her chair. "Sally,"
he added, "would you be afraid to take hold and see what you could make
of the place and me? Perhaps you could make something, though it would
probably be very hard work, my dear."

The blood surged into the girl's face, and she looked up at him with
open triumph in her eyes. It was her hour, and Sally, as it happened,
was not afraid of anything.

"Oh!" she exclaimed; "you really want me?"

"Yes," said Hawtrey quietly; "I think I have wanted you for ever so
long, though I did not know it until lately."

"Then," she said, "I'll do what I can, Gregory."

[Illustration: "'WOULD YOU BE AFRAID TO SEE WHAT YOU COULD MAKE OF
THE PLACE AND ME?'" (Page 242)]

Hawtrey bent his head and kissed her with a deference that he had not
expected to feel, for there was something in the girl's simplicity and
the completeness of her surrender which, though the thing seemed
astonishing, laid a restraint on him. As he sat down on the arm of her
chair with a hand upon her shoulder, he was more astonished still, for
she quietly made it clear that she expected a good deal from him. For
one thing, he realized that she meant him to take and to keep a foremost
place among his neighbors, and, though Sally had not the gift of clear
and imaginative expression, it became apparent that this was less for
her own sake than his. She was, with somewhat crude forcefulness, trying
to arouse a sense of responsibility in the man, to incite him to
resolute action and wholesome restraint, and, as he remembered what he
had hitherto thought of her, a salutary sense of confusion crept upon
him.

She seemed to recognize it, for at length she glanced up at him sharply.

"What is it, Gregory? Why do you look at me like that?" she asked.

Hawtrey smiled in a perplexed fashion. Hitherto she had made her appeal
through his senses to one side of his nature only. There was no doubt on
that point, but now it seemed there were in her qualities he had never
suspected. She had desired him as a husband, but