ldn't
give in. I always looked forward to your proposing. You ain't proposed
to me for a long time, Josiah."

"But, Clemmie, are you sartin sure it'll be all right now? If you get
your rest, are you sartin you won't feel different? Don't you think
you'd otter wait?"

"Josiah, ask me right now, so I can't back out, or get on another
stubborn streak. I thought it all out 'longside Edna's bed last night.
She was raving, and calling for some one, poor thing, who she'd refused
to marry when she was young. I said then and there that I wasn't going
to my grave with that kind of thing hanging over me. That is, if you
ever asked me again."

"You say you made up your mind last night, Clemmie? You sure it wa'n't
what I told you about Adoniah being married?"

"That had nothing to do with my decision."

"Then, you mean we're going to get married?"

"You ain't asked me yet."

"Miss Clemmie Pipkin," he began, bending his knees in the direction of
the floor, and upsetting the table as he went down with a thud, "will
you ship aboard this here old craft as fust mate with a rough old
skipper like me?"

"Lan' sakes! Get up off that floor. You look awful silly. Get up this
minute, or I'll say no."

The Captain got up with more alacrity than he had gone down.

"Will you marry me, honest, Clemmie?"

"Yes. You see, I kind of wanted to hear myself say it, because I'd made
up my mind that way."

An exclamation from the kitchen interrupted what the seaman was doing.
The minister had retired thither to clear the mist from his eyes which
had gathered there at signs of spring-time in the fall of these dear old
lives. He now stood in the door, holding a dripping coffee-pot.

"Oh, my coffee!" cried the housekeeper. "It's boiled all over the
place."

"Drat the coffee. Let her b'ile!"

Boil it certainly had, over the stove, on to the floor, and had
collected in a puddle at the threshold.

"That's what comes of not attending to your cooking," observed the
practical Miss Pipkin. The other Miss Pipkin, who had been sleeping for
years in the living sepulcher of her heart, was saying and doing many
things quite different.

From the cross-roads came the sound of the church-bell, calling the
people of Little River Parish to worship.

"There's the bell!" exclaimed Miss Pipkin. "It's only a half-hour before
service. If you'll excuse me, Mack, I don't think I'll go this morning.
You don't mind if I call you Mack here at home, do you?"