"Mebbe about all, sooner or later," said Mrs. Brown, in hopeful prediction. "He ain't a man to give up easy when he sets his mind in a certain direction."
"Perhaps his nephew isn't, either," suggested her daughter, with a little tinge of color deepening in each cheek.
"No, an' that's just the cause an' upshot of the whole trouble!" cried the mother, in a sudden flash of vehemence, dropping the persuasive tones she had heretofore employed for resentful chiding. "His nephew's at the bottom of it all, an' you seem ready an' willin' to throw away a good chance of a nice, comfortable home an' deprive me of a shelter in my old age just for the sake of that no-account Milt Derr, who happens to have smooth ways an' a nimble tongue. It looks like he's fairly bewitched you."
CHAPTER II.
A little later in the morning Sally tied on her sunbonnet, whose pale blue lining made a charming framing for her fresh complexion and pretty face, concealing it just sufficiently to make one keenly inquisitive to take a second longer glance beneath the ruffled rim.
With the basket of eggs swung coquettishly on her plump arm, and a stray wisp or two of wavy hair escaping from its confines down her shapely, curving neck and throat, in protest at imprisonment, the girl set out walking toward the town, a mile away.
Mrs. Brown had ingeniously delayed her daughter's going by finding several little duties for her to perform, hoping the while that before the girl should be ready to start the Squire would make his appearance and leave her no alternative but to accept a ride with him.
The morning grew apace, however, and finally Sally set out alone, quite grateful for the Squire's tardiness, and partly amused, partly vexed, by her mother's thinly-veiled excuses for delay.