“I sartin would! And you’ll take it, really?”
“Yes, Uncle Elisha.”
“Glory be! And—and, Caroline, you won’t hold it against me, my makin’ you think you was poor, and makin’ you live in that little place, and get along on just so much, and all that? Can you forgive me for doin’ that?”
“Forgive you? Can I ever thank you enough? I know I can’t; but I can try all my life to prove what—”
“S-s-h-h! s-s-h!... There!” with a great sigh, almost a sob, of relief, “I guess this’ll be a real Thanksgivin’, after all.”
But, a few minutes later, another thought came to him.
“Caroline,” he asked, “I wonder if, now that things are as they are, you couldn’t do somethin’ else—somethin’ that would please me an awful lot?”
“It’s somethin’ perhaps I ain’t got any right to ask. You mustn’t say yes if you don’t want to. The other day you told me you cared for Jim Pearson, but that you sent him away ’cause you thought you had to earn a livin’ for you and Steve. Now you know that you ain’t got to do that. And you said you told him if you ever changed your mind you’d send for him. Don’t you s’pose you could send for him now—right off—so he could get here for this big Thanksgivin’ of ours? Don’t you think you could, Caroline?”
He looked down into her face, and she looked down at the barn floor. But he saw the color creep up over her forehead.