"What I 'm thinking," said Henry, with the air of a man approaching a horse-trade cautiously, lest he should make a false step, "is this: that eighty of our'n jines onto your medder and west corn-field."
"Do you want to sell it?" said Rachel. "You might see father; he'd like to have it, I expect."
"Can't you guess what it is that I'm coming at?"
"No, I can't," said Rachel; "not to save my life."
"Looky here, Rache," and Henry gave his shoulders a twitch, "the two farms jine; now, what if you and me was to jine?"
"Well, Henry Miller, if you don't beat the Dutch! I never heard the like of that in all my born days!" Rachel had heard many propositions of marriage, but this sort of love-making, with eighty acres of prairie land for a buffer, was a novelty to her.
"Looky here, Rache," he said, in a tone of protest, "I've knew you ever since you was knee-high to a grasshopper. Now, what's the use of fooling and nonsense betwixt you and me? You know what I am—a good, stiddy-going, hard-working farmer, shore to get my sheer of what's to be had in the world without scrouging anybody else. And I know just exactly what you air. We've always got along mighty well together, and if I haven't ever made a fool of myself about your face, w'y, so much the better for me. Now, whaddy yeh say? Let's make it a bargain."
"W'y, Henry Miller, what a way of talking!"
"Rache, come, go along with me and see where'bouts I'm going to put up a house. Father's promised to help me. It's down by the spring, just beyand your medder fence. Will you go along down?"
"Well, I don't care if I do go down with you, Henry. But it's awful funny to come to such a subject in that way."