Rachel put on her sun-bonnet, and they went through the orchard together.
"We could put up a nice house there. Father's willing to throw in a forty of timber too—the forty that jines onto this eighty over yander. We'd be well fixed up to begin, no matter what your father done or didn't do for us. Whaddy you think of the plan?"
"You—you haven't said you loved me, or anything," said Rachel, piqued at having her charms quite left out of the account. But she could not hide from herself that Henry's proposition had substantial advantages. She only added, "What a curious man you are!"
"Don't you believe I'd make a good husband?"
"Yes, of course you would."
"And a good provider?"
"Yes, I'm shore of that."
"Well, now, I'm not going to pretend I'm soft on you. If you say 'No,' well and good; there's an end. I sha'n't worry myself into consumption. You've got a right to do as you please. I'm not going to have folks say that I'm another of the fools that's broke their hearts over Rache Albaugh. Once you're mine, I'll set my heart on you fast enough. But I never set my heart on anything I mightn't be able to get."
Rachel did not say anything to this bit of philosophy. She had in the last two weeks recognized the advisability of her getting married as soon as she could settle herself. But on taking an inventory of her present stock of beaux, she had mentally rejected them all. They were prospectively an unprosperous lot, and Rachel was too mature to marry adversity for the sake of sentiment. She found herself able to listen to Henry Miller's cool-blooded proposition with rather more tolerance than she felt when hearing the kind of love-talk she had been used to. Why not get her father to do as well by her as the Millers would by Henry, or to do better, seeing he was the richer and had but two children? Then they might begin life with plenty of acres and a good stock of butter cows.
Henry showed her where they could put their house, where the barn would be placed, and where they would have a garden. Rachel felt a certain pleasure in fancying herself the mistress of such a place. But it was contrary to all the precedents laid down in the few romances she had read for a woman to marry a man who was not her "slave"; that was the word the old romancers took delight in. She tried to coquet with Henry, in order to draw from him some sort of professions of love. A flirtation with a lay figure would have been quite as successful. He was plain prose, and she presently saw that if she accepted him it must be done in prose. She couldn't help liking his very prose; she was a little tired of slaves; it seemed, on the whole, better to have a man at least capable of being master of himself.