When Theodosia Ford married Wesley Brooke after a courtship of three
years, everybody concerned was satisfied. There was nothing
particularly romantic in either the courtship or marriage. Wesley was
a steady, well-meaning, rather slow fellow, comfortably off. He was
not at all handsome. But Theodosia was a very pretty girl with the
milky colouring of an auburn blonde and large china-blue eyes. She
looked mild and Madonna-like and was known to be sweet-tempered.
Wesley's older brother, Irving Brooke, had married a woman who kept
him in hot water all the time, so Heatherton folks said, but they
thought there was no fear of that with Wesley and Theodosia. They
would get along together all right.

Only old Jim Parmelee shook his head and said, "They might, and then
again they mightn't"; he knew the stock they came of and it was a kind
you could never predict about.

Wesley and Theodosia were third cousins; this meant that old Henry
Ford had been the great-great-grandfather of them both. Jim Parmelee,
who was ninety, had been a small boy when this remote ancestor was
still alive.

"I mind him well," said old Jim on the morning of Theodosia's wedding
day. There was a little group about the blacksmith's forge. Old Jim
was in the centre. He was a fat, twinkling-eyed old man, fresh and
ruddy in spite of his ninety years. "And," he went on, "he was about
the settest man you'd ever see or want to see. When old Henry Ford
made up his mind on any p'int a cyclone wouldn't turn him a
hairsbreadth--no, nor an earthquake neither. Didn't matter a mite how
much he suffered for it--he'd stick to it if it broke his heart. There
was always some story or other going round about old Henry's setness.
The family weren't quite so bad--only Tom. He was Dosia's
great-grandfather, and a regular chip of the old block. Since then
it's cropped out now and again all through the different branches of
the family. I mistrust if Dosia hasn't got a spice of it, and Wes
Brooke too, but mebbe not."

Old Jim was the only croaker. Wesley and Theodosia were married, in
the golden prime of the Indian summer, and settled down on their snug
little farm. Dosia was a beautiful bride, and Wesley's pride in her
was amusingly apparent. He thought nothing too good for her, the
Heatherton people said. It was a sight to make an old heart young to
see him march up the aisle of the church on Sunday in all the glossy
splendour of his wedding suit, his curly black hea