"You seem," said the minister, "to have taken in a man who has no claim on you, instead of letting him stay with his people. If you are going to marry him, let me advise you to do it now, and not wait for him to get well. The opinion of the world is, in a measure, to be respected,—though only in a measure."
Mary had risen to go in, but now she turned upon him.
"Married!" she repeated; and then again, in a hushed voice,—"married!"
"Yes," replied the minister testily, standing by his guns, "married."
Mary looked at him a moment, and then again she moved away. She glanced round at him, as she entered the door, and said very gently, "I guess you better go now. Good-day."
She closed the door, and the minister heard her bolt it. He told his wife briefly, on reaching home, that there wasn't much chance to talk with Mary, and perhaps the less there was said about it the better.
But as Mary sat down by her patient's bed, her face settled into sadness, because she was thinking about the world. It had not, heretofore, been one of her recognized planets; now that it had swung her way, she marveled at it.
The very next night, while she was eating her supper in the kitchen, the door opened, and Mattie walked in. Mattie had been washing late that afternoon. She always washed at odd times, and often in dull weather her undried clothes hung for days upon the line. She was "all beat out," for she had begun at three, and steamed through her work, to have an early supper at five.
"There, Mary Dunbar!" cried she; "I said I'd do it, an' I have. There ain't a neighbor got into this house for weeks, an' folks that want you to go nussin' have been turned away. I says to Adam, this very afternoon, 'I'll be whipped if I don't git in an' see what's goin' on!' There's some will have it Johnnie's got well, an' drove away without saying good-by to his own folks, an' some say he ain't likely to live, an' there he lays without a last word to his own brother! As for the childern, they've got an idea suthin' 's been done to uncle Johnnie, an' you can't mention him but they cry."
Mary rose calmly and began clearing her table. "I guess I wouldn't mention him, then," said she.