urpose," said Scattergood.

"Do tell," said Mandy.

"Yes, ma'am. It's like this: I own a hardware store and some other
prop'ty; not a heap, ma'am, but _some_. It's gittin' to be more. I
calculate, some day, to be wuth consid'able. When a man gits to this
p'int, he ought to have him a wife, eh?"

Mandy made no reply.

"So," said Scattergood, "I took to lookin' around a bit, and of all the
girls there was, Mandy, it looked to me like you would be the only one
to make the kind of a wife I want. That's honest. Yes, sir. Says I to
myself, 'Mandy Randle's the one for me.' So I washed up the buggy and
hitched up the horse and come right out. I been comin' ever since,
because that there first impression of mine has been bore out by
facts.... I'm askin' you, Mandy, will you be Missis Baines?"

"You're stiddy and savin'--and makin'," said Mandy. "Add what _you_ got
to what I got, and we'll be pretty well off. And I aim to help take care
of it."

"I aim to have you help," said Scattergood. "But, Mandy, I don't want
you scrimpin' and savin' too much. I want my wife should have as good as
the best, and be looked up to by the best. The day'll come, Mandy, when
we'll keep a hired girl!"

"No extravagances, Scattergood, till I say we kin afford it.... And,
Scattergood, you got to promise not to make no important move without
consultin' me. I got a head for business."

"Mandy," said Scattergood, "you and me is equal partners."

Which, say both tradition and history, is how the arrangement worked
out. Mandy and Scattergood _were_ equal partners. Scattergood was to
learn through the years that Mandy's _was_ a good head for business,
and, though business men who came to deal with Scattergood in the future
sometimes laughed when they found Mandy present at their conferences,
they never laughed but once.... And, though Scattergood's proffer of
marriage had not been couched in fervent terms of love, nor had Mandy
fallen on his overbroad bosom with rapture, theirs was a married life to
be envied by most, for there was between them perfect trust, sincere
affection, and wisest forbearance. For forty years Scattergood and Mandy
lived together as man and wife, and at the end both could look back
through the intimate years and say of the other that he had chosen well
his mate.

It may be thought that this bit of romance is dropped in here by legend
and history merely to amuse, or as a side light on the character of
Scattergood Baines.