"Oh!" said Meg, gratified; "what a lot of basins and things, Jem; I shall make you some puddings in those."
"I reckon you will," he answered smiling.
She bent over her flowers, touching them with soft tender touch, for she loved each one, and he stood looking on.
Could this sweet girl really belong to him? Then a thought came over him with a pang, of what the women grew into around them—the toiling, hard-working, ill-fed, sometimes ill-used women.
"But Meg will never grow like that," he thought; "not while I love her, and God loves her; and His love is a never-ending love."
"Ain't you going in t'other room to take off yer bonnet, my dear?" he asked; "or are the flowers too precious?"
"Don't you see," she answered, smiling, "my bonnet won't fade, and these will; so I thought I would do them first."
"I told mother to come and take a cup o' tea with us at five o'clock; it must be near that now."
He drew out a clumsy, old-fashioned watch from his pocket and glanced at it.
"It wants nigh on twenty minutes to, my girl, so if we mean to get out our things we must be quick."