"Don't ye do it, Jake," the cap'n besought him hoarsely. "I guess, think it over, she'll make up her mind to stay."
"Guess not," said Jake. It was more cheerfully than he had spoken that winter, the cap'n wonderingly thought. "I'll heave my things together an' go back to the old place."
In a day or two it was all different. They had moved the pieces as if it were some sober game, and now Mariana was in her own little house, warming it to take out the winter chill, and treating it with a tender haste, as if she had somehow done it wrong, and Lizzie Ann had gone to Cap'n Hanscom's. Mariana had hesitated on the doorstone, at her leaving, and there the cap'n bade her good-by, rather piteously and with finality, though they were to be neighbors still.
"Well, Eben," she hesitated. There was something she had meant to say. In spite of decency, in spite of feminine decorum, she had intended to give him a little shove into the path that should lead him, still innocently, to her own blazonment as a woman who could have her little triumphs like the rest. "If you should ever feel to tell Lizzie Ann I was a good housekeeper," she meant to say, "I should be obliged to you." He would do it, she knew, and from that prologue more would follow. The cap'n would go on to say he had besought her to marry him, never guessing, under Lizzie Ann's superior system of investigation, that he had disclosed himself at all. But as she mused absently on his face, another spirit took possession of her, the one that had presided over her humble hearth and welcomed the two men there in the neighborly visits that seemed so pleasant in remembrance. What did it avail that this or that woman should declare she was unsought? She was ashamed of waging that unworthy war. She found herself speaking without premeditation.
"You know what Lizzie Ann West says about you?"
"She ain't said she won't come?" He was dismayed and frankly terrified.
"She says you're dreadful spruce-lookin' and you're younger'n ever you was."
The cap'n laughed.
"That all?" he inquired. "Well, she must be cross-eyed."
"No," said Mariana, "she ain't cross-eyed; only she thinks you're a terrible likely man."