“Oh, mother, I have no thought of such a thing. Archie is a good laddie and has been kinder than I can tell you, but I do not think of him in that way. He will be away long enough to forget, I think.”
“Not forget, boyish though his love may be, but he may learn to care for some other with whom he may be thrown. Yet, I would not object to giving my little girl to a good man, and I might like the honor of becoming mother-in-law to a meenister.”
“You’ll be no one’s mother-in-law yet awhile.” Agnes gave her mother a fervent hug. “I shall help you to raise the children, and you know, you have much to learn of me, for I am a pioneer this long time, while you are quite new to it.”
“Saucy little child, to talk of teaching your mother. This Mr. Willett, when shall we see him? I have many questions to ask him.”
“He comes quite often.”
“He is a young man?”
“Not very; he is twenty-five.”
“I call that quite young. Agnes, my lamb, is that why you are not ready to be a meenister’s wife?”
Agnes’s head dropped against her mother’s shoulder, and she did not answer for a moment. “He does not think of me,” she said after a moment, and in hurried tones. “I—I—Polly says he has a sweetheart in Virginia.”
“But you think of him?” The mother was quick to note the hesitation and the evasion. “Ah, my baby, has it come to you then, womanhood’s dream?” she said gently.