last it come out that they'd
quarreled about where they'd live after they married. Of course he
expected to take his bride to his own house, and of course any
right-minded woman would 'a' been willin' to go with her husband; but
when he happened to say somethin' about the time when she'd be livin'
at Schuyler Court, she give him to understand that she couldn't leave
The Cedars, and that whoever married her would have to live at her
father's house.

"Now it's my belief, honey, that Miss Amaryllis hadn't any idea of
makin' Hamilton Schuyler leave Schuyler Court and come and live at The
Cedars. She was jest foolin' when she said that. She'd been used to
twistin' the men round her little finger all her life, and she wanted
to see if Hamilton was like all the rest. But Hamilton took it all in
earnest, and he said whoever heard of a man givin' up his own home and
goin' to live with his father-in-law, and did she want him to be the
laughin'-stock of the whole country? And she said that if he cared
more for his house than he cared for her he could stay at Schuyler
Court and she'd stay at The Cedars. And he said it wasn't Schuyler
Court he cared for; he'd leave Schuyler Court and build her another
house anywhere she wanted to live, but if she wouldn't leave her
father's house, then he'd have to believe that she cared more for The
Cedars than she cared for him. And they had it up and down and back
and forth, and at last she give him back his ring and sent him away
jest like she'd sent the others.

"The judge and his wife was terribly upset about it. They both loved
Hamilton like he was their own son, and the old lady said that Miss
Amaryllis had thrown away her best chance, and maybe her last one, and
she grieved mightily, for in that day, honey, an old-maid daughter
wasn't considered a blessin' by any means. They tried their best to
git Hamilton and Miss Amaryllis to make up, but he said he was certain
she didn't love him as well as a woman ought to love the man she was
goin' to marry, and she said a man who wouldn't try to please a woman
before marriage wouldn't be likely to try to please her after they
married; and he said he'd be willin' to give up his way, if he was
only certain she loved him right, and she said how could a woman love
a man that put his pleasure before hers? And the longer the old people
argued with her, the more contrairy it made Miss Amaryllis, and
finally they had to give it up.

"Of course all her ol