But Charlie was far from satisfied; he noticed that his father didn’t say directly that the room was for such and such purposes, only asked if it wouldn’t be suitable and convenient: he was more puzzled than ever.
“Mother, what is father laying a floor, building a fireplace, and setting a kettle in the wood-shed for? and he’s going to put in glass windows, for he’s got glass and putty.”
“I’m sure I don’t know any more than you do: he don’t tell me.”
“I expect he’s fixing it for Sally and Joe to go to housekeeping in.”
“I’m sure he ain’t,” replied Sally. “I don’t expect to have half so good a place as that. I expect to go into a log house or a brush camp.”
Sally and Joe had been engaged a long time. Joe had been saving up money, and so had Sally. He had bought a piece of wild land, and they were expecting to begin as Ben and his wife had. Sally was not hired. She was a cousin to Ben on his mother’s side, and was making it her home there, while getting ready to be married. A right smart Yankee girl was Sally Merrithew. She could wash, iron, bake, brew, card, spin, and weave. A noble helpmeet for a young man who had to make his way in the world.
Sally Merrithew had six sheep, which her father had given her in the spring. Ben put them on Griffin’s Island to pasture, and when he sheared his sheep, sheared them for her. She had spun and was weaving the wool into blankets. She had also bought linen yarn, which she was scouring, and meant to make sheets of. She calculated to help Mrs. Rhines enough to pay her board, and was not very particular whether she did more or not. They bleached linen, washed, and sang together, with the bobolinks and robins at the brook, and had the best times imaginable.
Aunt Molly Bradish thought she was running a dreadful risk to marry such a “harum-scarum cretur” as Joe Griffin; but Aunt Molly was mistaken there. Sally knew Joe a great deal better than she did, and knew that he was a smart, prudent, kind-hearted fellow as ever lived, without a single bad habit, except that of playing rough jokes. She was to the full as fond of fun as he, but did not approve of manifesting it in that way, and exerted a constantly restraining influence upon him, probably a great deal more than one would, who, of a less sanguine temperament, was incapable of appreciating a joke, and had no temptations of their own to struggle against.
There are people in this world who assume great merit for resisting temptations they never experienced. Sally manifested that common sense that is generally the accompaniment of true wit, when she replied to Aunt Molly by saying, that if Joe was to undergo all the hardships of clearing a farm in the wilderness, and experience the trials and disappointments that were the lot of most people, he would need all the spirits he possessed to keep him up.