“Take it, I'm not over and above a choice selection. I don't mention details, but take it as a general fact. Would you want to marry that kind of a selection, meaning me?”
“Oh, yes! Didn't you come for that? I thought you would.”
“And I thought you needed revelry! You must have had a lot of it.”
“I don't know what you mean. Listen! It keeps knocking at the door!”
“Oh, that's all right. Let it knock. Do you expect any more vagrants?”
“Vagrants?”
“Like me.”
“Like you? You only came home. Listen! It was like this when he died. But he wouldn't come to-night and stand outside and knock, would he? Not to-night, when you've come at last. But he used to. Of course, I fancied things. It's the storm. There's no one else now.”
A thousand spectres go whirling across Edom Hill such winter nights and come with importunate messages, but if the door is close and the fire courageous, it matters little. They are but wind and drift and out in the dark, and if one is in the light, it is a great point to keep the door fast against them and all forebodings, and let the coming days be what they will.
Men are not born in a night, or a year.