"I'm not bothering about you at all," said Barbara. "I'm not so good as you think I am. I let you take care of yourself in this matter; you're strong, and such things won't worry you." She was picking at her dress as she spoke. "Ever since you said what you did when you helped me over the fence last,"—Barbara took a long breath as she thought of that scene; she had often retraced all its details in her memory,—"I've known that you felt so toward me that you would face any thing. But I—I couldn't bear it if your folks should look down on me and I be—your wife." It was hard to say the last words; they sounded strangely, and when they were uttered, the sound of them put her into a trepidation not altogether disagreeable.
"Look down on you?" said Hiram, with a vehemence Barbara had never known him to manifest before. "Do you think my folks are such idiots? They don't meet a person like you often enough to get the habit of looking down on such."
"But you don't know women folks," said Barbara.
"I know my family better than you do, and you've got mighty curious notions about them and about yourself. You've always lived here in the woods, and you don't know what you're worth."
He lifted the empty apple-basket out of the way and sat down by her.
"Now, Barbara, you say you know how I feel toward you. You are the girl of all girls in the world for me. And now you won't spurn me, will you?" he said entreatingly.
Barbara's lips quivered and she seemed about to lose control of herself. However, after a little period of silence and struggle, she suppressed her feelings sufficiently to speak:
"I couldn't spurn you," she said. Then, after another pause: "Maybe you don't care any more for me than I do for you. But I'm in such trouble—that I can't tell what to say. Won't you wait and give me a little time? Things may be better after a while."
"How long shall I stay away? A week?" Mason's voice had a note of protest in it.
"Don't be hurt," she said, lifting her eyes timidly to his. "But I'm in such a hard place. Let me have two weeks or so to think about it, and see how things are going to turn." It was not that Barbara saw any chance for a change of circumstances, but that she could not resolve to decide the question either way, and wished to escape from her present perplexity by postponement.