or trade that I'm generally asked to quit
before you might say I've really commenced. It's been a mighty happy
summer for me, though I can't say I've done much in the selling line
except to you, Mattie. What with your kindness and these little visits
you've been good enough to let me make every week, I feel I may say
it's been the happiest summer of my life, and I'm never going to
forget it, but as I said, it's time for me to be moving on elsewhere
and finding something else to do."

"There is something for you to do right here--if you will do it," said
Mattie faintly. For a moment she felt as if she could not go on; Jed
and the garden and the scarf of late asters whirled around her
dizzily. She held by the sweet-pea trellis to steady herself.

"I--I said a terrible thing to Selena the other day. I--I don't know
what I'll do about it if--if--you don't help me out, Jed."

"I'll do anything I can," said Jed, with hearty sympathy. "You know
that, Mattie. What is the trouble?"

His kindly voice and the good will and affection beaming in his honest
blue eyes gave Mattie renewed courage to go on with her self-imposed
and most embarrassing task, although before she ended her voice shook
and dwindled away to such a low whisper that Jed had to bend his head
close to hers to hear what she was saying.

"I--I said--she goaded me into saying it, Jed--slighting and
slurring--jeering at me because you were going away. I just got mad,
Jed--and I told her you weren't going--that you and I--that we were to
be--married."

"Mattie, did you mean that?" he cried. "If you did, I'm the happiest
man alive. I didn't dare persoom--I didn't s'pose you thought anything
of me. But if you do--and if you want me--here's all there is of me,
heart and soul and body, forever and ever, as I've been all my life."

Thinking over this speech afterwards Jed was dissatisfied with it. He
thought he might have made it much more eloquent and romantic than it
was. But it served the purpose very well. It was convincing--it came
straight from his honest, stupid heart, and Mattie knew it. She held
out her hands and Jed gathered her into his arms.

It was certainly a most fortunate circumstance that the garden was
well out of the range of Selena's vision, or the sight of her sister
and the remaining member of the despised Crane family repeating their
foolish performance, which many years previous had resulted in Jed's
long banishment, might have caused her to