Then he pleaded for his children, who loved her so much; would she be their mother, just as she had promised Margaret she would? Then Dora roused herself, and the face which met the Squire’s view made his heart beat faster as he doubted what it portended.
“I did not think Margaret meant what you ask,” Dora said, her words coming gaspingly. “I thought she meant care for them as I have tried to do, and will do still. I’ll stay with you, John. I’ll be your housekeeper, but don’t ask me to be your wife. I can’t; I’m too young for you; I’m,—O John! O Margaret!” and here the voice broke down entirely, while Dora sobbed convulsively.
Margaret, too, had said she could not be his wife when he asked her. She, too, had said she was too young, and cried, but hers was not like Dora’s crying, and Squire Russell saw the difference, feeling perplexed, but never suspected the truth. It was natural for girls to cry, he thought, when they received an offer of marriage, and so, with both hands on her shoulder, he pleaded again, but this time for himself, telling her in words which his true love made eloquent, how dear she was to him, dearer, if possible, than his early choice, the beautiful Margaret. And Dora believed him, for she knew he was incapable of deception, and that made her pain harder to bear.
“If I had supposed you cared for any one else,” he said, “I should not have sought you, but I did not. Dr. West wrote to you, I know, and I was foolish enough to wish he had not called you his dear Dora, but you did not answer him, and of course there is but one conclusion to be drawn from that. You do not care for him, nor he for you?”
He put this to her interrogatively, but Dora could not speak. Once she thought to tell him what there was between her and Dr. West, but something kept her silent, and so in perfect good faith, kind, honest, truthful John kept on until she answered:
“Please leave me now; I must think, and I am so stunned and bewildered. I’ll answer another time.”
Squire Russell was far too good-natured to stay longer if she did not wish it, and stooping down he kissed his sleeping child, and said:
“Let me kiss baby’s auntie, too?”
Dora offered no resistance, and he touched her forehead respectfully, and then quitted the room. He had kissed her many times when Margaret was living, but no kiss had ever burned her as this one did, for she knew it was not a brother’s kiss, and with a sensation of loathing she passed her hand over the place, and then wiped it with her handkerchief, just as a rustling sound met her ear, and the next moment there was another pleader kneeling at her feet, Johnnie, who had overheard a part of his father’s wooing, and who took it up just where his sire had left it; his stormy, impetuous arguments bearing Dora completely away from herself, so that she hardly knew what she did or said.
“You will be father’s wife, Aunt Dora; you will, you must!” Johnnie began. “I’ve prayed for it every single day since I heard that stuff about old Dutton. I’ve gone to mother’s grave and knelt down there, asking that it might be. Jim and ’Tish pray so, too, for I told ’em to, and I should make Ben and Burt, only I knew they’d tell you; and Auntie, you will! Father’s older than you a lot, I s’pose, but he is so good, and was so kind to mother, even when she plagued him. I never told, but once after you went to Morrisville, she got awful, and lammed him the wust kind,—told him he was fat, and pussy, and awkward, and she was always ashamed of him at watering-places, and a sight more. At last she left the room, and poor papa put his head right in my lap and cried out loud. I cried too, and said to him: