"Then I needn't have sold my furniture," said she, with a happy turn of logic.
"Sold your furniture? You ain't sold it. I had Tim Fry bid it all in for me, an' I was goin' to have it crated up an' tell Ellery, when he come, he'd got to let me pay it on to Chicago, whether or no. An' then when I stood up there like a rooster on a fence, auctionin' of it off, it all come over me 'twa'n't the furniture an' the house I should miss. 'Twas you. I made up my mind then an' there I'd keep ye if I had to hopple ye by the ankle like Tolman's jumpin' steer."
Miss Letty withdrew from him and took a timid step to the west-room door, where, though the dusk was gathering, she could find the familiar shapes of her beloved possessions.
"I don't see how in the world I ever made up my mind I could," she said, a happy tremor in her voice.
It sounded to Cap'n Oliver strangely like a voice out of his past, unquelled by fears and abnegations. It was the voice that used to greet him when, in his splendid blue suit and shining satin tie, he had called for Letty Lamson, some thirty years ago, to take her in his sleigh to singing-school.
"Could what?" he inquired hilariously, out of his dream where the present made the fire on the hearth and the past lent him figures to sit by it.
"Why, get along without my old things."
"I s'pose you never so much as thought you couldn't get along without me," suggested the cap'n, in a kindly rallying.
"Yes," said Miss Letty soberly, "I did think that. I knew I couldn't."