He appeared to debate with himself cautiously.
“Well, now, I must say your teaching has taken a powerful hold on me this summer—” he reached under her arm and caught her other hand. “You’ve been like a sister to me and made me think about these things pretty deep and serious. I don’t know if I could get what you’ve taught me out of my mind or not.”
“But how could you ever marry another wife?”
“Well, a man don’t like to think he’s going to the bad place when he dies, all on account of not marrying a few more times. It sort of takes the ambition all out of him.”
“Oh, it couldn’t be right!”
“Well now, I’ll do as you say. Do I forget all these things you’ve been teaching me, and settle down with one wife,—or do I come into the Kingdom and lash the cinches of my glory good and plenty by marrying whenever I get time to build a new end on the house, like old man Wright does?”
She was silent.
“Like a sister would tell a brother,” he urged, with a tighter pressure of her two hands. But this seemed to recall another trouble to her mind.
“I—I’m not fit to be your sister—don’t talk of it—you don’t know—” Her voice broke, and he had to release her hand. Whereupon he put his own back up against the pine-tree, reached his arm about her, and had her head upon his shoulder.
“There, there now!”