"Then I suppose it's the deacon," said Agatha, with youth's characteristic readiness to jump at conclusions.
"I don't know, I'm sure. Don't hurry a body so, Agatha." Miss Finch spoke more sharply than was her wont. "If you were picking out a husband at my time of life, you wouldn't want to be rushed so that, like enough, you'd pick the wrong man."
Agatha shook her head. "No, Fritz, if I ever became such a heart-breaker that I had a batch of proposals in a single mail, I'd take as long as I could to make up my mind. I'd make the sweetness last like an all-day sucker."
Miss Finch's brief irritation vanished as she heard herself referred to as a heart-breaker. She blushed not unbecomingly.
"The names might help you in making up your mind," continued Agatha, bent on giving all the assistance in her power. "Which is the more—what is that word—mellifluous in your ears, Mrs. Wiggins, Mrs. Deacon Wiggins, or Mrs. James Doolittle?"
"I'm afraid you're not as serious-minded as you ought to be, Agatha," chided Miss Finch. "Marriage is 'most anything you like except a joke, and you can't make a joke of it, no matter how hard you try." As she moved toward the house with her two letters, leaving Agatha to collect the widely scattered mail, her face wore a troubled, anxious look, as if the fateful solemnity of the married state already had reached out from the future and enveloped her.
A CONFESSION