“Get on the train and go over to Evansville with me, and we’ll have the minister tie the knot there. Then home. And a nice little private set of rooms, all quiet and to ourselves, and no relations to bother us.”
“But ma’s fixed things to go up to New Harmony for the winter,” whispered Beetrus, struggling with this vision. “And she wouldn’t change her mind so suddenly—’specially as she doesn’t know you real well.”
“It isn’t ma I want to marry,” argued Poundstone, using his winning smile. “I’ll drop my relations, and you can surely do the same.”
“Drop ma!”
The girl was stung by a covert insult.
“Leave her a little while. Let her go up to New Harmony, you know.”
“And what do you mean about dropping your relations?” demanded Beetrus, growing straighter and more self-assured, and burning more vividly in the cheeks. “That they wouldn’t want to be acquainted with ma and me? No, sir; I ain’t going to let her go up to New Harmony alone; and I never would seriously have you unless she knew all about it and was willing. She might have read your letters if she wanted to; she knows about them. I never did anything in my life that ma told me not to do.”
“I thought five minutes’ talk on this subject would bring you to reason,” remonstrated Poundstone.
“Then you didn’t calculate right.”
“So it seems.”