"No old maids for me, Satiry," he flung back, slapping his knees to give emphasis to his words. "When I get spliced, it'll hev to be either a young woman or a widder, the last bespoke and preferred."
"Sakes alive! and what's Judy but a young woman? She's only turning twenty-four."
"Age hasn't got a thing to do with it; there's old maids at twenty and women folks turning forty that though unmarried ain't, and is young."
"Oliver Gilbert, he hit them differences plumb on the head once't some years back, when he was havin' considerable trouble in making folks understand that he wasn't calculatin' to take a second. Gilbert he's read lots of unor'nary thoughts in books, and he says, says he: ''Lisha, there's three kinds o' females when it comes to considerin' matrimony: widders that understand us men through 'xperience; just plain nice women folks that know what's necessary about us by intooition, as the Lord meant they should; and old maids that thinks they're dead wise, but all they know's by suspicion. Now don't you take one of those last, 'cause they suspect so much more bad of us than we really are that their idee is darned hard to live up tew!' Well, just at that time what I took to, was not gettin' married, but to the woods, and went in for trapping and lumbering for quite a spell.
"Judy Baker's terrible knowin' by suspicion. When she shakes hands, she'll jerk hern away before a man's really caught his grip, like she most knew he was goin' to squeeze it, which he, bein' I, hadn't no such idee. Then she looks mad, 'cause he, bein' I, didn't."
After this complete understanding, Satira Pegrim, who felt that in addition to the trip of inspection 'Lisha deserved some more positive encouragement, told him that if he would begin and mend the fence up at the farm and reshingle the buildings, she would begin to sew her carpet rags and sheets, and that would give them both time to be ready by Poppea's sixteenth birthday—this being the earliest age in Newfield County at which a well-brought-up girl could be expected to keep house, with a neighbor to accommodate in matter of washing and house cleaning.
'Lisha, jubilant over something so definite, not only bought tickets for Christy's Minstrels that chanced to be in Bridgeton that night, but insisted that they two sup at the Railway Hotel as well. Hence Satira's prolonged absence.
Thus it chanced that in two days after the night of Poppea's awakening, the post-office house, put in order from attic to porch, was left in her charge, and in the afternoon she read Gilbert's record written in the old ledger, they two sitting together in the long kitchen where the first scene had been set.
As she read, Gilbert, from the south window, where he sat fitting and adjusting an intricate bit of clockwork, furtively watched the varying color and expression of her face. After slowly reading his simple story, Poppea could not feel for a second that she was an unloved intruder, or fail herself to be filled anew with love for the old man who had opened his door. Her quick intuition and rapidly developing mentality scanned between the lines, learning of many acts of self-sacrifice and devotion that Gilbert believed locked securely in his own thoughts. It was the why of it all that rankled: the circumstances, people, or both that had made the charity necessary. When the girl thought of this, a steely flash came from her eyes, and the will that had been latent, except for childish bursts of impetuosity, set its signals at the corners of lips and nostrils, making the watcher sigh.
"Well, perhaps she may need it to stiffen her up by and by, who knows," said Gilbert to himself; "if only the Lord lets her always love something harder than she hates something else."