Hannah raged when she learned that the marriage was arranged (although nothing yet had been said to Doll). Bilby could not fathom her anger, for he thought she would be pleased to get the girl out of the house. He did not know that his wife believed herself the reason for Titus’s mopings and pinings. Indeed she had ordered for herself a new red riding-hood from Mr. Silas Gore, of Boston, so that she might have finery with which to fascinate the young man.
At last Doll knew she was to marry the good young man, for her foster father told her so. He told her roughly, for his heart broke to think of losing her to another. Sorrow made his tongue unkind. She would not listen to him, but, laughing, clung about his waist, saying she would never leave him, that he was the only man she could ever love. He wanted to keep her with him forever, but he knew that she was a strange girl, not like others, and he believed that if she were married she would become less secret and, having a house and children of her own, she would be happier.
Then, too, he knew that his wife was cruel to her, and he thought that it would be better for her to live under a roof where there was only love. It was in vain that he told her that she was now a woman grown, and it was time that she went about the business of women—that is, the bearing and raising of children. Did she have a deep aversion for her handsome and godly young neighbour? Would she not be proud some day to be a minister’s wife? No, no, never, never—she only wanted to be his dear foster child. He hardened his heart against her, and unwound her arms from about his waist. He told her to marry young Thumb, or to think up better reasons why she should not. He would not have such an ungrateful, stubborn woman about his house. If she did not wish to do as he wished, she could find another place to live. He never meant such hard words. He acted for her own best good. He pushed her from him, and made off to the fields.
She overtook him in a field of flax where the flowers were even bluer than the rare summer sky. The air was heavy with the murmur of bees. She flung herself on her knees and caught him by the long blue smock he wore.
‘Father,’ she cried, ‘wait, wait, I beg of you.’ She put her hands over her face and wept. He could have wept himself to see her thus. He hardened his heart and would have pushed by. She cried out she had something to tell him, so he waited silently, but without looking at her, for he was afraid that at the sight of her his heart would melt. She seized him by the hem of his smock and began to talk in a hoarse voice and a roaring voice like nothing he had ever heard out of her before. She had something to tell him, she said. There were reasons why she could not marry, especially not a young man who wished to be a minister. She feared she was not a Christian woman. She looked up at him from the ground, and he looked down upon her. Their eyes met, and in one horrid instant Mr. Bilby realized what it was she meant, why she feared she might not be a Christian woman. Of Evil she remembered everything, and at that moment he knew it.
He did not dare question her. He did not dare know what she knew. He essayed to comfort her and said he did not care who her parents really were. It mattered no more to him than who might be the sire of the cat that caught the mice in his barn. He also said what was not true, for he assured her that what one may have done or promised at a very tender age had no importance in the eyes of God. So he talked vaguely, and made off to his labours.
She left him and went to a secret spot she had among the birch trees on the hillside. She was not comforted, and her heart was hard set against the thought of marriage.
Those things which Doll told Mr. Bilby frightened him. He went straight to his neighbours that same afternoon and said the time had come when Titus, with his own tongue and in his own body, should do a little courting. Titus said how could he when Doll was never a flea-hop from her foster father’s heels? Thus it was arranged. Doll, that very night, should be left alone in her father’s house—Bilby and wife should go to Thumb’s. Titus would come to her, court her, and persuade her to marriage. After a sufficient time, all would return to Bilby’s and celebrate the happy betrothal with sack-posset, hymns, psalms, prayers, etc.
To this Titus and all agreed. Even Doll had nothing to say, but at her foster father’s bidding she put on her most wanton dress—a giddy dress of scarlet tiffany such as no pious woman would wish to possess.