"Where on earth did you find that girl, Ambrose Thompson?" she called out as soon as the couple were in hailing distance.
Ambrose drove closer. "I didn't find her, Miss Susan," he answered, lying like a saint.
Mrs. Barrows' eyes bored like old gimlets sharpened from long use. "She's too young to be your housekeeper, and she ain't ugly," she said. "The town'll talk."
But now Liza had stopped of her own accord in front of home, and Ambrose, letting go of his reins, put his arm about the girl. Under the new poke bonnet her face was pale except for the scarlet of her lips and her dark eyes that never left their refuge.
The sensitive point to her companion's long nose quivered. Coming toward them he could see Miner's six pink-and-white, blond sisters, and in their wake the dark little man. Miner was walking like a man at a funeral, with his head bowed, and that he did not wear a band of crêpe upon his arm was only that he had lacked opportunity; everything else suggested a pall. At the same instant, round the corner of the cottage, trotted Moses, waving his tail and wearing a smile of forgiveness. One look, and ignoring his master's friendly whistle, the little dog disappeared, not to be seen again for three days.
Silently Ambrose lifted the stranger down to the boardwalk and with his arm still about her turned to face Susan. Perhaps there was something of appeal in the familiar solemnity of his gaze and in his whimsical drawl:
"We'll let the town talk, Susan, won't we, or it'll bust?" he replied quietly. "No, ma'am, she ain't my hired housekeeper; no ma'am, she ain't no relation of mine; that is, no born blood kin." With this he began leading Sarah to the shelter of his own yard and, drawing her in, closed the gate.
"But we're pretty closely related, Susan." Purposely Ambrose's voice was raised. He then took a few irresistibly jubilant steps backward and forward, swinging the girl with him. "She's my wife!"