d go, of course, but
Jerome faithfully gave her the chance. Old Esek rather favoured
Jerome's suit, for Anne was the plainest of his many daughters, and no
other fellow seemed at all anxious to run Jerome off the track; but
she took her own way with true Stockard firmness, and matters were
allowed to drift on at the will of time or chance.

Three years later Jerome tried his luck again, with precisely the same
result, and after that he had asked Anne regularly once a year to
marry him, and just as regularly Anne said no a little more brusquely
and a little more decidedly every year. Now, in the mellowness of a
fifteen-year-old courtship, Jerome did not mind it at all. He knew
that everything comes to the man who has patience to wait.

Time, of course, had not stood still with Anne and Jerome, or with the
history of Deep Meadows. At the Stockard homestead the changes had
been many and marked. Every year or two there had been a wedding in
the big brick farmhouse, and one of old Esek's girls had been the
bride each time. Julia and Grace and Celia and Betty and Theodosia
and Clementina Stockard were all married and gone. But Anne had never
had another lover. There had to be an old maid in every big family she
said, and she was not going to marry Jerome Irving just for the sake
of having Mrs. on her tombstone.

Old Esek and his wife had been put away in the Deep Meadows
burying-ground. The broad, fertile Stockard acres passed into Anne's
possession. She was a good business-woman, and the farm continued to
be the best in the district. She kept two hired men and a servant
girl, and the sixteen-year-old of her oldest sister lived with her.
There were few visitors at the Stockard place now, but Jerome "dropped
in" every Saturday night with clockwork regularity and talked to Anne
about her stock and advised her regarding the rotation of her crops
and the setting out of her orchards. And at ten o'clock he would take
his hat and cane and tell Anne to be good to herself, and go home.

Anne had long since given up trying to discourage him; she even
accepted attentions from him now that she had used to refuse. He
always walked home with her from evening meetings and was her partner
in the games at quilting parties. It was great fun for the young
folks. "Old Jerome and Anne" were a standing joke in Deep Meadows. But
the older people had ceased to expect anything to come of it.

Anne laughed at Jerome as she had always done, and wo