“I don’t know, mother. It’s some one in a straw hat. Adam Wilson of the Quarry wears a straw hat.”
“Aye, of course, it’s Adam sure enough. Well, I’m glad we’re back home time enough to see him. He’d have been disappointed if he had come over and you’d been away. Drat this dust! It makes one not fit to be seen.”
The same idea seemed to have occurred to her daughter, for she had taken out her handkerchief, and was flicking her sleeves and the front of her dress.
“That’s right, Dolly. There’s some on your flounces. But, Lor’ bless you, Dolly, it don’t matter to him. It’s not your dress he looks at, but your face. Now I shouldn’t be very surprised if he hadn’t come over to ask you from father.”
“I think he’d best begin by asking me from myself,” remarked the girl.
“Ah, but you’ll have him, Dolly, when he does.”
“I’m not so sure of that, mother.” The older woman threw up her hands. “There! I don’t know what the gals are coming to. I don’t indeed. It’s the Board Schools as does it. When I was a gal, if a decent young man came a-courtin’, we gave him a ‘Yes’ or a ‘No.’ We didn’t keep him hanging on like a half-clipped sheep. Now, here are you with two of them at your beck, and you can’t give an answer to either of them.”
“Why, mother, that’s it,” cried the daughter, with something between a laugh and a sob. “May be if they came one at a time I’d know what to say.”
“What have you agin Adam Wilson?”
“Nothing. But I have nothing against Elias Mason.”