"Oh! I am faint—I shall die of this great joy—but oh! if you should be mistaken!"
"But I am not. How should I be mistaken? When a mother buries her child deep in the grave-yard, does she forget what mothers' love is? Those who forget their youth in happiness may be deceived. I never can!"
"And you think he loves me?"
Mary leaned forward and laid her clasped hands pleadingly on the knotted fingers of the old maid.
Aunt Hannah looked down almost tenderly through her spectacles, and a smile crept over her mouth.
"I know he loves you."
Mary Fuller's radiant face drooped forward at these words, and she fell to kissing these old hands eagerly, as if the knotted veins were filled with honey dew upon which her heart feasted.
"Stop, stop!" said aunt Hannah, withdrawing her hands, and laying them softly on the bowed head of her protege, "don't give way so; remember Joseph is very feeble yet, from the fever that nearly cost him his life, and that he has nothing to live on but what he calls his art; Nathan and I might help him, but we have only a few acres of land to live on, and are getting older every day. There is not the strength of one robust man among us all—to say nothing of the poor girl up stairs."
"But he loves me. Oh! aunt, you are sure of that?"
"But how can he marry you, poor as he is, with no more power to work than a child?"