“And I say it ain’t proper respect to Annie’s memory for you to talk that way.”
“I ain’t disrespectful. There never were two such nice girls in one village before. I nearly grew wall-eyed tryin’ to look at you both at once. Annie and I were happy as clams for fifteen years. She’s been gone five, and I’ve asked ye four separate times if you’d go down the hill o’ life with me, and there ain’t any sense in your refusin’ and flappin’ rugs in my face.”
“You know I don’t like this sort o’ foolin’, Hiram. I wish you’d be done with it.”
“I ain’t ever goin’ to be done with it, Betsy, not while you live and I live.”
“Have some sense,” she rejoined. “We both made our choice when we were young and we must abide by it—both of us.”
“You didn’t marry the Bruce family.”
“I did, too.”
Betsy Foster’s eyes, suddenly reminiscent, did not suit in their expression the brusqueness of her tone. She saw again her young self, heart-sick with the disappointment of her girlish fancy, leaving this little village for the city, and finding a haven with the bride who became her friend as well as mistress.
“I did, too,” she repeated. “It was my silver weddin’ only last week, when Mr. Irving had his twenty-fourth birthday.”