r was she lacking
in passion. She had had a healthy girlhood, and a wholesome home life.
She had been taught the conventional ideals of the marriage relations
that have kept the race strong throughout the centuries. Mary
possessed great strength of character and fine moral courage.
Frequently, not wishing to show her real feeling for the young man;
too well poised to be carried off into the wrong channel, defended and
excused by many over-sentimental and light-headed novelists of the
day, she sometimes appeared almost indifferent to the impetuous youth
with warm, red blood leaping in his veins, who desired so ardently to
possess her.

Mary's Aunt had taught her the sanctity of parenthood, also that women
are not always the weaker sex. There are times when they must show
their superiority to "mere man" in being the stronger of the two,
mentally if not physically, and Ralph Jackson knew when he called Mary
"wife" she would endow him with all the wealth of her pure womanhood,
sacredly kept for the clean-souled young man, whose devotion she
finally rewarded by promising to marry him the second week in October.

Sibylla Linsabigler, a good but ignorant girl, accustomed to hearing
her elder brothers speak slightingly regarding the sanctity of love
and marriage, was greatly attached to Mary, whom she admired
exceedingly, and looked up to almost as a superior being. She
unconsciously imitated many of Mary's ways and mannerisms, and sought
to adopt her higher ideals of life and standard of morals.

One Sunday, as Jake Crouthamel was spending the evening with Sibylla,
as was his usual custom, he attempted some slight familiarity, which
annoyed Sibylla greatly. Jake, noticing the young girl's displeasure
at his action, remarked, "I think me Sibylla, you are stuck up yet" (a
grave fault in the Bucks County farm hand's opinion).

"No, Chake," Sibylla replied, "I ain't, but Mary, she say a man gives
a girl more respect what keeps herself to herself before she is
married, and I lofe you Chake and want that you respect me if we
marry."

Fritz and Elizabeth Schmidt, on hearing the news of Mary's approaching
marriage, promptly begged the privilege of decorating the old farm
house parlor for the expected ceremony. They scoured the surrounding
woods and countryside for decorations; along old stone fences and
among shrubbery by the roadside they gathered large branches of Bitter
Sweet. Its racemes of orange-colored fruit, which later