“Yes, if it hadn’t been for that accident, I should have come back and asked you Hulda, true as preaching. But the old tune struck up, and ’twas no use trying to get up a wedding-dance to such music as that. And then when I got in luck again, somehow, I kinder got stuck up, and got used to being my own master; but I did keep kinder thinkin’ on you. But what’s the use of my tellin’ you all this? we’ve got by, all that nonsense, and I’m flat on by back agin, and as ‘poor as a puddock.’ I don’t s’pose it’s very manly in me to go confessing this thing now; but I’ve kinder felt mean about it, and your comin’, so cleverly and neighborly like, when I’ve nobody to feel sorry for me, has sorter made me do it.”
Mark Small shifted about uneasily in his seat, and whittled very briskly, and tried to whistle; but he found it hard to “pucker,” and could not muster a note.
Aunt Hulda shivered, and looked off into the ruins; and nursed her chin in her hand, and thought, “‘We’ve got by all that nonsense,’ have we?” Perhaps he had. She had not. No! Mark Small had been the idol of her younger days—her hero—by no means a handsome one; neither brave or gifted; yet she had loved him dearly, without any hope of being his wife, and now to find that he had thought of her, had wished to marry her, was happiness enough to pay for all the waiting, though they might never come any nearer to each other,—though, as he said, “they had got by all that nonsense.”
She spoke at last.
“Mark, I’m glad you told me this. You needn’t be ashamed of it, neither. It’s a manly thing for you to do. It’s wiped out some hard thoughts I’ve had of you; for I want you to understand that if you’d come back then, Cyrus Cheever, or any other man, would have been no consequence at all.”
And because all that nonsense had died out, Hulda’s hand fell upon Mark’s, and the ruined paper maker dropped his knife, and clasped it; and both gazed wistfully into the ruins, as the twilight darkened, and the fires burned dimmer.
“Mark, I am so sorry for you. What will you do now? Your mill is ruined. ’Twill take a heap of money to build it up again.”
“I don’t know, Hulda; but I ain’t a bit scart. I’ve begun too many times at the bottom of the ladder, to give up now.”
“Trust in the Lord, Mark, trust in the Lord.”