"I know that; I know it just as well as you do. But I'm a woman, and I'd like to meet one man as was a man. I know men pretty well; I knew Mr. Ray better than he knew himself. Mr. Ray thought he was doing me an honor to marry me, and I knew he wasn't, and I lived with him fifteen years and never threw it in his face once. I let him talk about his ancestors and I never talked about mine. He thought I didn't have any; he never realized I kept still so as to keep from telling such stories as he did. His ancestors! I'd like to know what sort of ancestors he had! If he'd had any ancestors, he'd have been bound to be descended from them, I should think, in which case he wouldn't have been a Ray. The fact that he and his father called themselves Jared and spelt it Jarrod was enough for me; but to make a long story short I'm going to marry Sammy Adams, and I ran down to tell you that at the same time that I brought the letter."
There was an outbreak of exclamations and then a beginning at congratulations, but Mrs. Ray stopped those.
"I don't want congratulations," she said; "there isn't anything to congratulate me about, for I never tried to get him, so I haven't had a success or anything to be proud of. It's just that the dam is so likely to be going to drown him out that he wants to rent my second floor and pay the rent every first Monday in the month. I'm going to go straight on with my life, and continue to save my own money to finish educating Mr. Ray's children by his second wife. We shall go to church together, and he'll sit with me evenings when I ain't too tired, or when he's nervous over case-knives and swindling. He's going to pay me for all his tailoring and all his hair-cuts, but he's to say when he thinks he needs anything new or it's getting too long. He'll buy our potatoes and chickens of me at the regular price, but I'll furnish my own eggs, like I always have."
"It's settled, then?" said Mrs. O'Neil, with a slight smile.
"Yes, it's settled. I don't believe the dam will ever be dug, but I'll marry Sammy all the same."
"You're right about the dam, Mrs. Ray," Alva said, speaking for the first time. "I don't believe it will ever be built, either; the Falls have too many friends. Besides, there must come a time when the God of All will say to our American Mammon, 'So far and no further shalt thou go,' and I believe the time is now and that the place is here."
"Well, I don't know about all that," said Mrs. Ray; "but Josiah Bates drove the surveyors home yesterday, and he gathered from them that if they built that dam and made that lake, the lake was pretty sure to burst out around back of the Wiley place—that low place you know—and we'd have a new waterfall in through the Wiley cow-pasture, even if we didn't have nothing worse."
"Goodness me!" cried Mrs. O'Neil, "what would the Wileys say to that!"
"I don't know what the Wileys would say to that," said Mrs. Ray; "but it made me know what I'd say to Sammy. Yes, indeed. If there isn't going to be any dam, the summers here are going to go on exactly as they used to, and I've got to have a man to bring up my ice! You know my motto, 'He moves in a mysterious way,' and I can see now why the Lathbuns and the dam both come. I had a dreadful time last summer getting my ice up, and as long as everybody's been betting all along that I'd always marry Sammy some day, I might as well do it now as any time. Yes, indeed."
"You are very sensible," said Alva, rising, "and I'm sure that you will be very happy. I congratulate you." She held out her hand. "Good-bye."