The candle flame flared up as the last of the tallow ran in a pool round the yielding wick, and for one distorted moment the edges of the slit throat flickered to the semblance of a smile. Then the flame reeled and sank, and, spark by spark, the red of the glowing wick died into the darkness.
WHY SENATH MARRIED
Asenath Lear was neither a pretty woman nor a particularly young one, but having in the first instance embraced spinsterhood voluntarily, she was cheerfully resigned to its enforced continuance. All the world knew she had been "asked" by Samuel Harvey of the Upper Farm, and though all the world considered her a fool for refusing him, it still could not throw in her face the taunt that she had never had a chance.
She had said no to Samuel because at that time she was young enough—being but twenty—to nurse vague yearnings for something more romantic than the stolid Sam, but the years fled taking with them the bloom that had been her only beauty, and romance never showed so much as the tip of a wing-feather.
"I'm doubtful but that you were plum foolish to send Sam'l Harvey to another woman's arms, Senath," her mother told her once, "but there, I never was one for driving a maid. There's a chance yet; ef you'll look around you'll see 'tes the plain-featured women as has the husbands."
"'Tes because the pretty ones wouldn't have en, I fear," said Senath on a gleam of truth, but with a very contented laugh, "men's a pack of trouble in the flesh. I would ha' wed sure 'nough ef et hadn' been that when you get to knaw a man you see him as somethen' so different from your thought of him."