DYNAMITE
When a man injures a woman's feelings by any particular course of
conduct to which she objects, the maternal in her rises to the surface
and she treats and forgives him as she would a naughty child,--but a man
makes any kind of woman-affront into a lover's quarrel. That is what
masculine Glendale has been doing to its women folks for four days, and
I believe everybody has been secretly enjoying it.
As to the rally, they have stood aside with their hands in their pockets
and their noses in the air, and if it hadn't been for Aunt Augusta and
Nell and Jane being natural-born carpenters and draymen, we might have
had to give it up and let them go on with it to their own glory.
When Nell and Jane went to see Mr. Dodd about building the long tables
to serve the barbecue dinner on, he said he was too busy to do it and
hadn't even any lumber to sell.
Then things happened in my back yard that it sounds like a romance to
write about. Jane sent me over to borrow the Crag's team and wagon and
Henrietta and Cousin Martha and any of the rest of his woman-impedimenta
that I could get. He was out of town, trying a case over at Bolivar, and
wouldn't get back until Monday night.
I am glad he wasn't here, for it would have gone hard with me to treat
him in the manner that Jane decided it was best for all the women in
Glendale to treat all the men in this crisis. It sounded sweet and cold
as molasses dispenses itself to you in midwinter, and I could see it was
a strain on Mamie and Caroline and Mrs. Kirkland, Nell's mother, and
young Mrs. Dodd, the carpenter's wife,--the Boston girl that married him
before she realized him,--to keep it up from day to day.
Besides that I'm going to be a politician's wife--though he doesn't know
it yet--and I want the Crag to be away from the necessity of taking any
sides in this civilized warfare. That's one reason I am such a
go-between for Uncle Peter and the League, I am making votes for my man,
so I consider it all right for me never to deliver any of their messages
to each other as they are given to me, but to twist them into
agreeability to suit myself.
Sallie said the Dominie was entirely on our side and that was why she
went walking with him Sunday afternoon. All the other men were cool to
him and he is so sensitive.
But to get back to the back yard. I glory in writing it and want the
Five to consider it as almost sacred data, though I hope they will never
have to do likewise.
Jane and Nell and Aunt Augusta took the two axes and one large hammer
and tore down my back fence while I and the others loaded the planks on
the wagon. Jane appointed Henrietta to sit and hold the slow old horses
in case they should have got demoralized by the militant atmosphere
pervading Glendale and try to bolt. I never saw any human being enjoy
herself as Henrietta did, and it was worth it all just to look into her
radiant countenance.
Jane took all the hard top blows to do herself and left the unloosening
of the lower nails to Aunt Augusta while Nell ripped off the planks that
stuck. I could almost hear Nell's long, polished finger nails go with a
rip every time she jerked a particularly tough old plank into
subjection, and Aunt Augusta dispensed encouraging axioms about pioneer
work as she banged along behind Jane. Jane herself looked as cool as a
cucumber, didn't get the least bit ruffled, and had the expression on
her face that the truly normal woman has while she is hemming a baby's
flannel petticoat.
And though during the day many delightful crises were precipitated, the
most interesting were the expressions that devastated Polk Hayes's and
Lee Greenfield's faces as they came around the side of the house to see
what all that hammering was about.
"Caroline!" exclaimed Lee, in perfect agony, as he beheld the lady of
his ardent, though long-restrained, affections poised across the wheel
of the wagon tugging at the middle of a heavy plank which Mrs. Dodd and
I were pushing up to her, while Mamie, the mother of seven, stood firmly
on top of the wagon guiding it into place.
"Help!" gasped Polk, as he started to take the ax from Jane by force.
Then we all stopped while Jane quietly gurgled the molasses of the
situation to them, and sent them on down the street sadder and wiser
men. I thought Polk was going to cry on her shoulder before he was
finally persuaded to go and leave us to our fate, and the expression on
Lee's face as he looked up at torn, dirty, perspiring Caroline, with a
smudge on her nose and blood on her hand from an absolutely
insignificant scratch, was such as ought to have been on Ned's face as
he ought to have been standing by Mamie with the asafetida bottle.
That's mixed up but the Five ought to catch the point.
It took up all of Saturday afternoon and part of Monday morning, but we
built those tables, thereby disciplining masculine Glendale with a
severity that I didn't think could have been in us.
We all rested on Sunday, that is, ostensibly. Jane put down all sorts of
things on paper that everybody had to do on Monday and on Tuesday.
Henrietta sat by her in a state of trance and it did me good to see
Sallie out in the hammock at Widegables taking care of both the Kit and
the Pup, laboriously assisted by panting Aunt Dilsie, because Jane
explained to her so beautifully that she needed a lot of Henrietta's
time, that Sallie acquiesced with good-natured bewilderment. Of course,
Cousin Jasmine helped her some, but she was busy aiding Cousin Martha to
beat up some mysterious eggs in the kitchen--with the shutters shut
because it was Sunday. It was something that takes two days to "set" and
was to be the _pièce de résistance_, after the barbecue.
Mrs. Hargrove couldn't help Sallie at all with the kiddies, either,
because she was looking through all her boxes and bundles for a letter
from her son, which she thought said something about favoring woman's
rights, and if it is like she thinks it is, she is going to go to the
barbecue and get things nice and hot instead of having them brought to
her cold.
I had hoped to get a few minutes Sunday afternoon to myself so I could
go up into the garret and look through one of the trunks I brought from
Paris with me to see how many sets of things I have got left. I am going
to need a trousseau pretty soon, and I might need it more suddenly than
I expect. I don't see any reason for people's not marrying immediately
when they make up their minds, and my half of ours is made up strong
enough to decidedly influence rapidity in his. But then I really don't
believe that the Crag would care very much about the high lights of a
trousseau, and it was just as well that Nell came in to get me to help
her write a letter to National Headquarters to know if she could have
any kind of assignment in the Campaign for the Convention to alter the
Constitution in Tennessee when it meets next winter.
"Have you made up your mind fully to go in for public life, Nell?" I
asked mildly. "Some of your friends might not like it very much
and--and--"
"If you mean Polk Hayes, Evelina," Nell answered with the positiveness
that only a very young person can get up the courage to use, "I have
forgot that I was ever influenced by his narrow-minded, primitive
personality at all. If I ever love and marry it will be a man who can
appreciate and further my real woman's destiny."
"Well, then, that's all right," I answered with such relief in my heart
that it must have showed in my voice and face. I had worried about Nell
since I could see plainly, though she hasn't told me yet, and I am sure
he doesn't realize it, that Jane had decided Folk's destiny. Nell is not
twenty-one yet and she will find lots of men in the world that will be
fully capable of making her believe they feel that way about her
destiny, until they succeed in tying her up to using it for the real
utilitarian purposes they are sure such a pretty woman is created for.
It will take men in general another hundred years yet, and lots of
suffering, to realize that a woman's destiny is anything but himself,
and get to housekeeping with her on that basis.
Of course, I see the justice and need of perfect equality in all things
between the sexes, emotional equality especially, but I hope the time
will never come when men get as hungry to see their women folks as said
feminists get to see them, after they have been away about four days out
in the Harpeth Valley. It takes a woman's patience to stand the tug.
The Crag didn't jog into Glendale on his raw-boned old horse until
one-thirty Monday night. I had been watching down Providence Road for
him from my pillow ever since I put out my light at eleven, because Jane
had decided that it was our duty to go to bed early so as to be as fresh
as possible for the rally in the morning. She had walked to the gate
with Polk at ten and hadn't come back until eleven, so, of course, she
was ready to turn in. It was just foolish, primitive old convention
that kept me from slipping on my slippers and dressing-gown--I've got
the prettiest ones that ever came across the Atlantic, Louise de
Mereton, Rue de Rivoli, Paris--and going down to the gate to see him for
just a minute. That second he stood undecided in the middle of the road
looking at my darkened house was agony that I'm not going to put up with
very much longer.
Scientifically I feel that I'm thinking life with one lobe of my brain
and breathing with one lung. Still I made myself go to sleep.
Everybody believes in God in a different kind of way, and mine satisfies
me entirely. I know that the hairs of my head are numbered and that not
a sparrow falls; and I don't stop at that. I feel sure that my tears are
measured and my smiles are rejoiced over, and when I want a good day to
come to me I ask for it and mostly get it. There never was another like
the one He sent me down this morning on the first slim ray of dawn that
slid over the side of Old Harpeth!
The sun was warm and jolly and hospitable from the arrival of its first
rays, but the wind was deliciously cool and bracing and full of the wine
of October. It came racing across the fields laden with harvest scents,
blustering a bit now and then enough to bring down a shower of nuts or
to make the yellow corn in the shocks in the fields rustle ominously of
a winter soon to come.
The maples on the bluff were garmented in royal crimson brocaded with
yellow, the buck-bushes that grew along the edges of the rocks were
strung with magenta berries and regiments of tall royal purple iron
weeds and yellow-plumed golden-rod were marshaled in squads and clumps
for a background for the long tables.
Jane and I with Henrietta were out by the old gray moss rock at the
first break of day, installing Jasper and Petunia and a few of their
_confrères_. Jasper has always been king of all Glendale barbecue-pits
and he had had them dug the day before and filled with dry hickory fires
all night, and his mien was so haughty that I trembled for the slaves
under his command. His basket of "yarbs" was under the side of the rock
in hoodoo-like shadows and the wagons of poor, innocent, sacrificed
lambs and turkeys and sucking-pigs were backed up by the largest
infernal pit. Petunia was already elbow deep in a cedar tub of corn meal
for the pones, and another minion was shucking late roasting-ears and
washing the sweet potatoes to be packed down with the meat by eight
o-clock. A wagon was to collect the baked hams and sandwiches and
biscuits and confections of all variety and pedigree from the rest of
the League at ten o'clock.
We didn't know it then but another wagon was already being loaded very
privately in town with ice and bottles, glasses and lemons and mint and
kegs and schooners. I am awfully glad that the Equality League had
forgotten all about the wetting up of the rally, because I don't believe
we would have been equal to the situation with Aunt Augusta and Jane
both prohibition enthusiasts, but it did so promote the sentiment of
peace and good cheer during the day for us to all feel that the men had
not failed us in a crisis, as well as in the natural qualities inherent
in their offering for the feast. There was a whole case of Uncle Peter's
private stock. Could human nature have done better than that?
But if we did forget to provide the liquids, I am glad we had the
foresight to provide other viands enough to feed a regiment, because a
whole army came.
"Evelina," gasped Jane, as we stood on the edge of the bluff that
commands a view of almost all the Harpeth Valley stretched out like the
very garden of Eden itself, crossed by silver creeks, lined with broad
roads and mantled in the richness of the harvest haze, "can all those
wagons full of people be coming to accept our invitation?"
"Yes, they're our guests," I answered, with the elation of generations
of rally-givers rising in my breast, as I saw the stream of wagons and
carriages and buggies, with now and then a motor-car, all approaching
Glendale from all points of the compass.
"Have we enough to feed them. Jasper?" she turned and asked in still
further alarm.
"Nothing never give out in Glendale yit, since we took the cover offen
the pits for Old Hickory in my granddad's time," he answered, with a
trace of offense in his voice, as he stood over a half tub of butter
mixing in his yarbs with mutterings that sounded like incantations. I
drew Jane away for I felt that it was no time to disturb him, when the
basting of his baked meats was just about to begin.
I was glad that about all the countryside had gathered, unhitched their
wagons, picketed their horses, and got down to the enjoyment of the day
before the motor-cars bringing the distinguished guests had even started
from Bolivar. It was great to watch the farmers slap neighbors on the
back, exchange news and tobacco plugs, while the rosy women folks
grouped and ungrouped in radiant good cheer with children squirming and
tangling over and under and around the rejoicings.
"This, Evelina," remarked Jane, with controlled emotion in her voice and
a mist in her eyes behind their glasses, "is not only the bone and sinew
but also the rich red blood in the arteries of our nation. I feel
humbled and honored at being permitted to go among them."
And the sight of dear old Jane "mixing" with those Harpeth Valley farmer
folk was one of the things I have put aside to remember for always. They
all knew me, of course, and I was a bit teary at their greetings. Big
motherly women took me in their arms and younger ones laid their babies
in my arms and laughed and cried over me, while every few minutes some
rugged old farmer would call out for Colonel Shelby's "little gal" and
look searchingly in my face for the likeness to my fire-eating, old
Confederate, politician father.
But it was Jane that took them by storm and kept them, too, through the
crisis of the day. Jane is the _reveille_ the Harpeth Valley has been
waiting for for fifty years. I thought I was, but Jane is it.
And it was into an atmosphere of almost hilarious enjoyment that the
distinguished Commission arrived a few minutes before noon, just as
Jasper's barbecue-pits were beginning to send forth absolutely maddening
aromas.
Nell whirled up the hill first and turned her Buick across the road by
the bluff with that rakish skill of hers that always sends my heart into
my throat. And whom did she have sitting at her blue, embroidered linen
elbow but Richard Hall himself? Good old big, strong dandy Dickie, how
great it was to see him again, and if I had had my own heart in my
breast it would have leaped with delight at the sight of him! But even
the Crag's that I had exchanged mine for, though it was an entire
stranger to Dickie, beat fast enough in sympathy with the dance in my
eyes to send the color up to my face in good fashion as I hurried across
a clump of golden-rod to meet him.
"Evelina, the Lovely!" he exclaimed in his big booming voice, as he took
me by both shoulders and shook me instead of shaking merely my hand.
"Richard the Royal!" I answered in our old _Quartier Latin_ form of
greeting. I didn't look right into his eyes as I always had, however,
and something sent a keen pain through the exchanged heart in my breast
at the thought that I might be obliged to hurt the dandy old dear.
But suddenly the sight of Nell's loveliness cheered me. She had had
Dick in that car with her ever since nine o'clock, almost three hours,
showing him the sights of that teeming heavy lush harvest countryside
around Bolivar and Glendale, all over which are low-roofed old country
houses which brood over families that cluster around the unit that one
man and a woman make in their commonwealth. Nell's eyes were sweet as
she looked at him. I'll wait and see if I need to worry over him. With
the fervor I felt I had a right to, I then avoided the issue of
Richard's eyes, put it up to God and Nell, and introduced him to Jane.
And while the three of them stood waiting for Nell to back up the Buick
and put her spark-plug in her pocket,--only Richard calmly took it and
put it in his,--the rest of the cars came up the hill and turned into
the edge of the golden-rod.
Aunt Augusta was in the first one with the Chairman of the Commission,
whose name even would have paralyzed anybody but Aunt Augusta; and
Mamie and Cousin Martha, Caroline and several more of the ladies made up
the rest of the Committee who had gone to escort the distinguished
guests to the rally.
The Crag was in the last car with a perfectly delicious old gray-haired
edition of Dickie, and I almost fell on both their necks at once. What
saved them was Polk appearing between us with three long mint-topped
glasses.
I'm glad old Dick immediately had his eyebrows well tangled in the mint
of his julep, for I got my own eyes farther down into Cousin James's
deep gray ones than I expected and it was hard to come up. I hadn't had
a plunge in them for three days and I went pretty deep.
"Eve!" he said softly, as he raised his glass and smiled across his
green tuft.
Yes, I know he knows that I know, there is an answer to that name when
he says it that way, but I'm not going to give it until I am ready and
the place is romantically secluded enough to suit me. He just dares me
when he says it to me before other people. That reminds me, the harvest
moon is full to-night and rises an hour later every evening from now on.
I don't want to wait another month before I propose to him. I've always
chosen moonlight for that catastrophe of my life. I wonder if men have
as good times planning the culmination of their suits as I am having
with mine?
But I had to come down quickly to a little thing like the rally and give
the signal to feed all the five hundred people, who by that time were
nice, polite, ravening wolves, for Jasper had uncovered the turkey-pit
to keep them from getting too brown while the lambs caught up with them.
Jane was the master of ceremonies, because I balked at the last minute.
I think I would be capable of managing even a National Convention in
Chicago--that far away from the Harpeth Valley,--but I couldn't do it
with my friends of pioneer generations looking on. A man or woman never
grows up at all to the woman who has knitted baby socks for them or the
man who has let them ride down the hill on the front of his saddle.
And at the head of the center table Jane asked the Crag to sit beside
her, so that he would be in place to command attention for her when she
wanted to speak, and where everybody could hear him when he did.
And while the table was piled high and emptied, and piled high again, so
many bouquets of oratory were culled, tied, and cast at the guests along
the table that I believe they would have been obliged to pay exclusive
attention to them if the things to eat had not been just as odoriferous
and substantial. Before dinner was over everybody had spoken that was of
a suitable age, and some that had heretofore in the Harpeth Valley been
considered of an unsuitable sex.
Jane's speech of welcome made such an impression that it is no wonder
some of the old mothers in Israel got up to iterate it, as the dinner
progressed.
She, as usual, refrained from prejudice-smashing and
stones-at-glass-houses throwing, and she hadn't said ten sentences
before she had the whole feeding multitude with her.
She began on the way our pioneer mothers had to contrive to keep larders
stocked and good things ready for the households, and she tickled the
palate of every man present by mentioning every achievement in a
culinary way that every woman of his household had made in all the
generations that had gone over Harpeth Valley. She called all the
concoctions by their right names, too, and she always gave the name of
the originator, who was some dear old lady that was sleeping in the
Greenwood at the foot of the hill, or in some grave over at Providence
or Hillsboro or Bolivar, and who was grandmother or great-grandmother to
a hundred or more of the guests. I had wondered why Jane had been poring
over that old autograph manuscript receipt book in my desk for days, and
as she paid these modern resurrecting compliments to the long gone
cooks, tears and laughed literally deluged the table.
And as she built up, achievement by achievement, the domestic
woman-history of the valley, Jane showed in the most insidious way
possible how the pioneer women had been really the warp on which had
been woven the woof of the whole history of their part of the Nation,
political, financial, and religious. I never heard anything like it in
all my life, and as I looked down those long tables at those aroused,
tense, farmer faces, I knew Jane had cracked the geological crust of the
Harpeth Valley, and built a brake that would stop any whirlwind on the
woman-question that might attempt to come in on us over the Ridge from
the outside world. They saw her point and were hard hit. When "Votes for
Women" gets to coming down Providence Road the farmers will hitch up a
wagon and take mother and the children with a well-packed lunch basket
to meet it half way. This is a prophecy!
Then, after Jane sat down, I don't believe such a speechifying ever was
before as resounded out over the river, even in the time of Old Hickory.
Everybody had something to say and got to his feet to say it well, even
if some of them did brandish a turkey wing or a Iamb rib to emphasize
their points.
And the women were the funniest things I ever beheld, as we were treated
to one maiden speech after another, issuing from the lips of plump
matrons anywhere from thirty to sixty. They had never done it before,
but liked it after they had tried.
Mother Mayberry from Providence, who is the grand old woman of the whole
valley, having established her claim to the title thirty years ago by
taking up her dead doctor husband's practice and "riding saddlebags to
suffering ever since," as she puts it, broke the feminine ice by rising
from her seat by the side of one of the entranced Magnates,--who had
been so delighted with her and her philosophies that he could hardly do
his dinner justice,--and addressing the rally in her wonderful old voice
with her white curls flying and her cheeks as pink as a girl's.
"Children," she said, after everybody had clapped and clapped so she
couldn't get a start for several minutes, "The Harpeth Valley women have
been a-marching along behind the men for many a day, because their
strong shoulders had to break undergrowth for both, but now husbands and
fathers and sons have got their feet up on the bluff of Paradise Ridge,
and it does look like they will be a-reaching down their hands to help
us up, in the break of a new day, to stand by their side; and I, for
one, say mount!--I'm ready!"
A perfect war of applause answered her, and Dickie's father got up to go
down the whole length of the table to shake hands with her, but had to
wait until she came out of the embrace of Nell's fluffy arms, and got a
hand free from the Magnate on one side and Aunt Augusta on the other.
Even Sallie began to look speechful, and I believe she would have got up
and spoken a few words on the subject of women, and how they need men to
look after them, but she said something to Mr. Haley, who shook his head
and then got up and prosed beautifully to us for ten minutes, and would
have gone on longer, if he hadn't seen Henrietta begin to look mutinous.
The feast had begun at one o'clock, but by Jasper's skilful maneuvering
of one gorgeous viand after the other, into the right place, by having
relays of pones browned to the right turn and potatoes at the proper
bursting point, it had been prolonged until the shadows of late
afternoon were beginning to turn purple.
"Don't nobody ever leave one of my barbecue tables until sundown begins
to tetch up the empty bones," has been his boast for years. And as he
had cleared away the last scrap from the last table, he leaned against a
tree, exhausted and triumphant, with alert, adoring eyes fixed on the
Crag, who had risen in his place at the head of the long central table.
I had felt entirely too far away from him down at the other end with one
of the junior Magnates and Dickie, but I was glad then that I sat so I
could look straight into his face as the light from across the Harpeth
Valley illumined it without, while a wonderful glow lit it from within.
All of the others had spoken of the achievements of their families and
forefathers and vaunted the human history of the valley, but he spoke
of the great hill-rimmed Earth Pocket itself. He gave the Earth credit
for the crops that she had yielded up for her children's sustenance. He
described how she had bred forest kings for the building of their homes,
granted stores of fuel from her mines for their warming, and nourished
great white cotton patches and flocks of sheep to clothe them from
frosts and winds.
And as he spoke in a powerful voice that intoned up in the tree-tops
like a great deep bell, he turned and looked out over the valley with an
expression like what must have been on Moses's face when he saw into the
promised land.
[Illustration: "She's our mother," he said]
"She's our Mother," he said, as he flung back the long lock from across
his forehead and stretched out his strong arm and slender hand towards
the sun that was dropping fast down to the rim of Old Harpeth. "She has
bared her breasts to suckle us, covered us from sun and snow, and now
she expects something from us. If she has built us strong and ready,
then we are to answer when the world has need of us and her storehouses
and mines. We are to give out her invitations and welcome all who are
hungry and who come a-seeking. Gentlemen, her wealth and her fertility
are yours--and her beauty!"
For a long, long minute every face in the assembly was turned to the
setting sun, and a perfect glory rose from the valley and burned the
call of its grandeur into their eyes. We seemed to be looking across
fields and forests and streams to the dim purple hills that might be the
ramparts of the Holy City itself, while just below us lay the little
quiet village of the dead whose souls must just have gone before.
And after that everybody rose with one accord and began to hurry to
start out upon the long roads homeward, just as the great yellow moon
rose in the east to balance the red old sun that was sinking in the
west. Only the Magnate sat still in his place for several long minutes
looking out across to Old Harpeth, and I wondered whether he was
thinking about the Eternal City or how many rails it was going to take
to span the valley at his feet.
And I--I just stood on the edge of the bluff by myself and let my soul
lift up its wings of rejoicing that my Crag had got his beautiful desire
for apostrophizing the Mother-Valley so all the world might hear. And
then suddenly it came over me in a great warm, uplifting, awe-inspiring
rush that a woman who takes on herself voluntarily the responsibility of
marrying a poet and an orator and a mystic, who is the complete edition
of a Mossback that all those qualities imply, must square her shoulders
for a long, steady, pioneer march through a strange country.
Could such achievement be for me?
"Please God!" I prayed right across into the sunset, "make me a full
cup that never fails him!"
I don't know how long I stood talking with God that way about my man,
but when I turned and looked back under the maples everybody was gone,
and I could hear the last rattle and whirl going down the hill. For a
second I felt that there was nobody but Him and me left on the hill, but
even in that second my heart knew better.
"Now?" I questioned myself softly, out over to the yellow moon that had
at last languidly and gracefully risen, putting the finishing touch to
the scene I had been planning for my proposal.
"Evelina," said the Crag quietly from where he stood leaning against the
tallest maple, "shall we stay here forever and ever, or hurry down
through the cemetery by the short cut to the station to say good-by to
the railroaders as they expect us to do?"
Nobody ever had a better opening than that, and I ought to have said,
"Be mine, be mine," with some sort of personal variation of the theme,
and have clapped him to my breast and been happy ever after. That is
what a courageous man would have done under the circumstances, with an
opportunity like that, but I got the worst kind of scare I ever
experienced, and answered:
"How much time have we got? Do you think we can make it?"
"Plenty," he answered comfortably as I began to quicken my pace to the
little gate that leads between the hedge into the little half-acre of
those who rest. Then as I tried to pass him, he caught my hand and made
me walk in the narrow path close at his side.
[Illustration: Scrounged so close to his arm that it was difficult for
both of them to walk.]
Now even a very strong-minded woman, who had to go through a little
graveyard with moonlight making the tombstones glower out from deep
shadows of cedar trees, in the depths of which strange birds croak,
while the wind rustles the dry leaves into piles as they fall, wouldn't
feel like honorably proposing to the man she intended to marry, even
if she was scrouged so close to his arm that it was difficult for both
of them to walk, would she?
I excuse myself this time, but I must hold myself to the same standard
that I want to hold Lee Greenfield to. How do I know that he hasn't had
all sorts of cold, creepy feeling's keeping him from proposing to
Caroline?
I hereby promise myself that I will ask Cousin James to marry me the
next favorable opportunity I get, if I die with fright the next minute,
or have to make the opportunity.
Still, I can't help wondering what does keep him so composed under the
circumstances. Surely he wouldn't refuse me, but how do I know for sure?
How does a man even know if a woman is--?