“If only ... you could take me ... now ... right off,” he faltered; “before anything happens ... to prevent? I’d be good to you ... till the day I die!”
“I ain’t afraid to risk it, Caleb,” said Amanda. “I’ll take you now when you need me the most. We’ll just put our two forlorn houses together an’ see if we can make ’em into a home!”
Caleb gave one choking sob of content and gratitude. His hand relaxed its clasp of Amanda’s; his head dropped and he fainted.
William Benson came in just then.
“What’s the matter?” he cried, coming quickly toward the bed. “Has he had a spell? He was so much better last night I expected to see him settin’ up!”
“He’ll come to in a minute,” said Amanda. “Give me the palm-leaf fan. We’re goin’ to be married in a day or so, an’ he got kind of excited talkin’ it over.”
“Moses in the bulrushes!” ejaculated William Benson, sitting down heavily in the nearest chair.
William Benson was not a sentimental or imaginative person, and he confessed he couldn’t make head nor tail out o’ the affair; said it was the queerest an’ beatin’est weddin’ that ever took place in Bonny Eagle; didn’t know when they fixed it up, nor how, nor why, if you come to that. Amanda Dalton had never had a beau, but she was the likeliest woman in the village, spite o’ that, an’ Caleb Kimball was the onlikeliest man. Amanda was the smartest woman, an’ Caleb the laziest man. He kind o’ thought Amanda ’d married Caleb so ’t she could clean house for him; but it seemed an awful high price to pay for a job. He guessed she couldn’t bear to have his everlastin’ whiteweed seedin’ itself into her hayfield, an’ the only way she could stop it was to marry him an’ weed it out. He thought, too, that Caleb had kind o’ got int’ the habit o’ watchin’ Mandy flyin’ about down to her place. There’s nothin’ so fascinatin’ as to set still an’ see other folks work. The critter was so busy, an’ so diff’rent from him, mebbe it kind o’ tantalized him.
The Widow Thatcher was convinced that Mandy must have gone for Caleb hammer ’n’ tongs when he was too weak to hold out against her. No woman in her sober senses would paper a man’s kitchen for him unless she intended to get some use out of it herself. “We don’t know what the disciples would ’a’ done,” she said, “nor the apostles, nor the saints, nor the archangels; we only know what women-folks would ’a’ done, and there ain’t one above ground that would ’a’ cleaned Caleb Kimball’s house without she expected to live in it.”
Susan Benson had a vague instinct with regard to the real facts of the case, but even she mustered up courage to ask Amanda once how the wonderful matter came about.