The young man’s face grew scarlet and then paled off rapidly. He looked like a man accused of a crime. “Why, Emarine,” he said, feebly.
He did not receive the ring, and she threw it on the floor at his feet. A whole month she had slept with that ring against her lips—the bond of her love and his! Now, it was only the emblem of her “knuckling-down” to another woman.
“You needn’t to stand there a-pretendin’ you don’t know what I mean.”
“Well, I don’t, Emarine.”
“Yes, you do, too. Didn’t you promise your mother that if there was any knucklin’-down to be did, I’d be the one to do it, an’ not her?”
“Why—er—Emarine—”
She laughed scornfully.
“Don’t go to tryin’ to get out of it. You know you did. Well, you can take your ring, an’ your mother, an’ all her old duds. I don’t want any o’ you.”
“Emarine,” said the young man, looking guilty and honest at the same time, “the talk I had with my mother didn’t amount to a pinch o’ snuff. It wa’n’t anything to make yuh act this way. She don’t like yuh just because I’m goin’ to marry yuh”—
“Oh, but you ain’t,” interrupted Emarine, with an aggravating laugh.