d
a'ready."

Absalom was twenty years old, stoutly built and coarse-featured, a
deeply ingrained obstinacy being the only characteristic his heavy
countenance suggested. He still attended the district school for a few
months of the winter term. His father was one of the richest farmers of
the neighborhood, and Absalom, being his only child, was considered a
matrimonial prize.

"Is there nobody left for you but me?" Tillie inquired in a
matter-of-fact tone. The conjugal relation, as she saw it in her
father's home and in the neighborhood, with its entirely practical
basis and utter absence of sentiment, had no attraction or interest for
her, and she had long since made up her mind that she would none of it.

"There ain't much choice," granted Absalom. "But I anyways would pick
out you, Tillie."

"Why me?"

"I dunno. I take to you. And I seen a'ready how handy you was at the
work still. Mom says, too, you'd make me a good housekeeper."

Tillie never dreamed of resenting this practical approval of her
qualifications for the post with which Absalom designed to honor her.
It was because of her familiarity with such matrimonial standards as
these that from her childhood up she had determined never to marry.
From what she gathered of Miss Margaret's married life, through her
letters, and from what she learned from the books and magazines which
she read, she knew that out in the great unknown world there existed
another basis of marriage. But she did not understand it and she never
thought about it. The strongly emotional tide of her girlhood, up to
this time, had been absorbed by her remarkable love for Miss Margaret
and by her earnest religiousness.

"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 t