why I haven't mentioned it at home
is--"

"Then you don't care for Joe?" the old man asked with his serious smile.

"Oh, Dr. Ben! Of course, I like Joe enormously, he's a dear sweet boy,"
Sally answered smoothly. "But you know as well as I do how my father
feels toward the village people in Monroe, and while the Hawkeses are
just as nice as they can be in their way--" again Sally's flow of
eloquence was strangely shaken; she felt as a child might, caught up in
the arm of a much larger person and rushed along helplessly with only
an occasional heartening touch of her feet to the ground--"after all,
that isn't quite our way, is it?" she asked. If only, thought the
nervous little girl who was Sally, if only she knew what Dr. Ben wanted
her to say!

"Why can't ye be honest with me, Sally?" said the doctor. "Ye love Joe,
don't ye?"

Sally's head dropped, the colour rose in her cheeks, and the tears
came. She nodded, and through all her body ran a delicious thrill at
the acknowledged passion.

"Ye've found each other out, in spite of them all!" said the old man
musingly. "And what does his age or yours, or his place or yours,
matter beside that? They've tried to fill you with lies, and you've
found that the lies don't hold water. Well--"

He straightened up suddenly, and began to march about the room. Sally,
kneeling still over the books, tears drying on her cheeks, watched him.

"Sally," said the doctor, "God made you and Joe Hawkes and your love
for each other. I don't know who made the social laws by which women
govern these little towns, but I suspect it was the devil. You've been
brought up to feel that if you marry a man Mrs. Cy Frost doesn't ask to
her house, you'll be unhappy ever after. But I ask you, Sally--I ask
you as a man old enough to be your father--if you had your home, your
husband, your health, your garden, and your children, wouldn't you be a
far happier woman than--than Lydia say, or Florence Frost, or all the
other girls who sit about this town waiting for a man with position
enough--position, BAH!--to marry?"

Sally's face was glowing.

"Oh, Dr. Ben, _I_ don't care anything about position!" she said, all
her honest innocence in her face.

"Then why do you act as if you did?" he said, well pleased.

"And would you advise me to marry Joe?" she asked radiantly.

"Joe--Tom--Billy, whomever you please!" he answered impatiently. "But
don't be afraid because he doesn't wear silk socks, Sally, o