But he kept his head down and did not promise.
“Well?” she said, and faint as she was, her voice was like steel.
But still he did not promise.
After a moment she lifted her hand and curved it about his throat again. He started to draw away, but almost instantly shuddered closer to her and fell to kissing the white lace around her neck.
“Well,” she said, coldly, “hurry an’ make your choice. I hear mother a-comin’.”
“Oh, Emarine!” he burst out, passionately. “I promise—I promise yuh ev’rything. My mother’s gittin’ old an’ childish, an’ it ain’t right, but I can’t give you up ag’in—I can’t! I promise—I swear!”
Her face took on a tenderness worthy a nobler victory. She slipped her weak, bare arm up around him and drew his lips down to hers.
An hour later he walked away from the house, the happiest man in Oregon City—or in all Oregon, for that matter. Mrs. Endey watched him through the vines. “Well, he’s a-walkin’ knee-deep in promises,” she reflected, with a comfortable laugh, as she sent a hot iron hissing over a newly sprinkled towel. “I guess that mother o’ his’n’ll learn a thing er two if she tries any o’ her back-sass with Emarine.”
Emarine gained strength rapidly. Orville urged an immediate marriage, but Mrs Endey objected. “I won’t hear to ’t tell Emarine gits her spunk back,” she declared. “When she gits to settin’ her heels down the way she ust to before she got sick, she can git married. I’ll know then she’s got her spunk back.”
Toward the last of July Emarine commenced setting her heels down in the manner approved by her mother; so, on the first of August they were married and went to live with Mrs. Palmer. At the last moment Mrs. Endey whispered grimly—“Now, you mind you hold your head high.”