"You must."
"I do."
"We will dismiss the new theory."
"If you demand it."
The idea of limited matrimonial partnership therefore passed away. Then
there loomed up the question of an engagement-ring.
"You agree with me, I hope," said Abner, "that all these symbolical
follies might very well be done away with?"
"No," said Medora firmly; "folly--sheer, utter folly--claims me for a
month at least. And as for symbols, they are the very bread of the race,
and I am as much of the human tribe as anybody else is."
A few days later Medora was wearing her engagement-ring.
This step accomplished, Abner felt himself free to scale down to a
minimum the customary attentions of a courtship.
Medora protested. "You are no more than a man, and I am no less than a
woman. You must give all that a man is expected to give and I must have
all that a woman is accustomed to receive."
The engagement lasted through the summer, and Medora was married at the
farm in October. Abner's parents came the thirty miles across country to
their son's wedding. His father disclosed a singularly buoyant and
expansive nature; he lived in the blessings the day brought forth, and
considered not too deeply--as the poet once counselled--the questions
that had kept his son in the fume and heat of unquenchable discussion.
Mrs. Joyce was quiet, demure, rock-rooted in her self-respecting
gravity--a sweet, sympathetic, winning little woman. She advanced at once
into the bustle of the household, and it was plain that nature had
endowed her with a fondness for work for work's very sake, and that she
was proud of her own activity and thoroughness. Abner, everybody saw, was
immensely wrapped up in her. "A man who makes such a good son," said
Giles to his wife, "will make a good husband."
"I expect him to," said Medora, overhearing. "And I intend to put on the
last few finishing touches myself."