"Undine, haven't I waited long enough for an answer? I can't expect you to love me as I love you, but just give me a word to live on till you come back!"
"I don't hardly know what to say," she murmured, reaching up to see if she had lost her pearl earring. "I like you better than anybody I've ever seen, but I wish you'd let me think it over these next two months. I'm not sure I'm fitted to be a farmer's wife. I've never done any housework, you know, Matthew."
Oh! how fragile, how plaintive, how in need of all a man's strength she looked in the moonlight!
"Why, Undine, do you s'pose I'd let you spoil your pretty hands with rough work? I'll always be there to stand between you and the hard parts, and you shall have a hired girl to wait on you every minute of the day. Besides, you don't know the improvements I'm going to make in my premises. The house is going to beat anything there is in Riverboro or Edgewood. While I'm gettin' ready for you, Undine, won't you be gettin' ready for me?"
"You domineering man, you!" she whispered, playing with the lapels of his coat, "teasing me into saying 'yes' against my will! I suppose you must go ahead with your improvements and let me see them when I come back. I am sure it'll be all right!"
"Seal your promise with a kiss?" Matthew whispered, and it is difficult to see how Undine could have evaded the direct issue, even had she wished, had not Mrs. Wilkins, opening a window, called out,
"The door-key is under the rug, Undine."
Whereupon Matthew, who was concealed by the thick foliage of the maples, opened the gate softly and sped homeward on the wings of love. She had said to go ahead, that it would be all right. That settled it.
He had looked forward to another and a fonder parting when he should take Undine to the station on Friday, but on Thursday, when he went rapturously to Biddeford to engage paperers, painters, and plumbers, the school committee voted to give up the closing exercises on account of illness in the school, and Undine promptly took the train for Greenford, leaving a note for Matthew to the effect that she had been called home suddenly, as her stepfather wanted her to go to Albany with him on a business trip.
This was in the nature of a blow, but only a slight one, after all, a disappointment that in no wise affected their relations or their tacit compact with each other; so Matthew plunged into a series of fourteen-hour days of work on his improvements. No man, no three men, could keep up with him. He was omnipresent and untiring, and the labor progressed so rapidly that the village could not restrain its curiosity, all the gentlemen of leisure passing their time in the vicinity of the Milliken house, ready to furnish suggestions or to act as brakes upon inadvisable changes.