iend Barbara, is thee sorry to see me go?"

"Thee knows what is best for thee to do," said she.

"But is thee sorry?"

"I am not sorry."

"Perhaps thy mind is not inclined to me as much as I had hoped?" I said
with considerable hot-headedness.

"Thee is to me what thee has ever been--neither more nor less."

"Barbara!" said her father with a high-raised voice.

She started up before him, her face very much increased in color, and she
folded her arms above her kerchief. "Father," she said, "if thee thinks I
am old enough to marry, _I_ think I am old enough to form an opinion of my
own. Had I been in Samuel Biddle's place, and an offer of change of
residence had been proffered to me, I should first have gone to the woman
who was to be my wife and told her the bearings of the case, and let her
tell her father: I should never have gone to her father first."

She would have gone from the room, but her father called her back and bade
her resume her sewing; which she did, though I saw her neckerchief rise
and fall as though her heart were unusually perturbed beneath it.

"Is thee grown perverse?" said her father angrily.

"Nay," she answered. "I am my father's daughter: my will is my own."

"This to me?" he said.

"Friend Hicks," said I, in much pain, "I pray thee let me go: I have
unwittingly caused this. It has been because I set my mind so wilfully
upon thy daughter that I forgot all else but her, and had not the courage
to say to her what I did to thee."

He spoke long and earnestly to me then, and when we looked around Barbara
had quietly quitted the room.

But as I went sore of spirit down the lane on my way home she suddenly
faced me. There were marks upon her face as of the stains of drops of
water, and her eyes, I perceived, were heavy and swollen. "Will thee
forgive me, Samuel Biddle?" said she.

"I should ask that of thee," I replied.

"Thee knows I was headstrong," she said, taking my sleeve in her hand.

"Not more so than I, for I made up my mind to marry thee, and, I fear me,
thought more of myself than of thee." She looked with compassion, I
thought, upon me.

"I would be thy wife, no matter what comes," said she.

"Feeling for me all that a wife should feel for her husband?"

"Yea."

Then I stood by Barbara while she wiped her eyes upon my sleeve.

For a day or so I felt constrained at friend Hicks's house, but when I saw
his daughter the same as usual, kind and considerate--perhaps mo