"Well, by hen!" Cam declared, "I'm just goin' to ask herself myself."
"No, you ain't, Cam Gentry," Dollie said decisively.
"Now, Dollie, don't you dictate to your lord and master no more. I won't stand it." Cam squinted up at her from his chair in a ludicrous attempt to frown. "Worst hen-pecked man in town, by golly."
"I ain't goin' to dictate to no fool, Cam. If you want to be one, I can't help it. I must go and set bread now." And Dollie pattered off singing "Come Thou Fount," in a soft little old-fashioned tune.
"Marjie, girl, I knowed you when you was in bib aperns, and I knowed your father long ago. Best man ever went out to fight and never got back. They's as good a one comin' back, though, some day," he added softly, and smiled as the pink bloom on Marjie's cheeks deepened. "Marjie, don't git mad at an old man like your Uncle Cam. I mean no harm."
It was the morning after the party. Marjie, who had been helping Mary Gentry "straighten up," was resting now by the cosy fireplace, while Dollie and Mary prepared lunch.
"Go ahead, Uncle Cam," the girl said, smiling. "I couldn't get mad at you, because you never would do anything unkind."
"Well, little sweetheart, honest now, and I won't tell, and it's none of my doggoned business neither; but be you goin' to marry Amos Judson?"
There was no resentment in the girl's face when she heard his halting question, but the pink color left it, and her white cheeks and big brown eyes gave her a stateliness Cam had never seen in her before.