but I'd just like to have
one more in the family."

"Aunt Elkins might think she could make a home with us," said the cap'n,
pondering. "No, she wouldn't, either, come to think. Her son's sent her
her fare to go out to them this winter. Ain't you got some friend,
Mariana?"

"No," said Mariana. She was watching him with a steady gaze, as if she
had planted a magic seed and looked for its uprising. "If there was only
somebody else that's left alone as you and I be," she offered
speciously.

The cap'n felt a quick delight over his own cleverness.

"Why," said he, "there's Jake Preble."

"He never'd do it," said Mariana. She shook her head conclusively.
"Never 'n the world."

"I bet ye forty dollars," said the cap'n. "He could go over 'n' take
care of his stock an' do his choppin', an' come back to a warm house.
I'm goin' to ask him. I'm goin' this minute. You set up, an' I'll be
back an' tell ye."

"You take it from me," Mariana was calling after him. "He won't do it
and it's noways right he should. You tell him so from me."

"I bet ye forty dollars," cried the cap'n.

The door clanged behind him and he was gone. Mariana had never heard him
in such demented haste since the days when one squad of the boys
besieged another in the schoolhouse, and Eben Hanscom was deputed to run
for reinforcements of those that went home at noon. But she settled down
there by the fire and held herself quiet until he should come. She
seemed to have shut a gate behind her; but whether she had opened
another to lead into the unknown country where women are like their
sisters, triumphant over things, she could not tell. At the moment she
found herself in a little inclosure where everybody could see her and
laugh at her, and she could not answer back.

Before the forestick had burned in two, she heard him coming, but he was
not alone. She knew that other step, marking out a longer stride, and
the steady inarticulate responses when the cap'n talked. The cap'n
opened the door and they walked in. Jake Preble was ahead, a tall,
powerful creature in his working-clothes, his thin face with the bright
brown eyes interrogating her, his mouth, in spite of him, moving
nervously under the mustache.

"What's all this?" said he roughly, approaching her as if, Mariana
thought, he owned her.

That air of his had pleased her once: it gave her a curious little
thrill of acquiescent loyalty; but now it simply hurt, and the instinct
of resentment ro