"Mr. Armstrong, spare us!" laughs Addie nervously. "We're two such miserable little specimens of the Philistine, Emmy and I—we're scarcely worth destruction."
"I don't know about that. If measles or croup had carried off Delilah when she was as young and harmless-looking as you, Miss Lefroy, why, Samson might have died in his bed. May I enter? There are no scissors on the premises?"
"No; your beard is quite safe; you may enter if you like."
"I went to the farm first, and your aunt directed me here," he says, taking a seat beside her on the stone slab.
"I got tired of the house—it was so close. The smell of the laborers' dinner toward midday is very strong everywhere; it flavors even the sweetbrier outside the parlor window; so I came here."
"Yes, it was a good move."
A silence follows; Addie wildly racks her brain for a sensible remark, but finds not one. He, resting his arm on the table, for some moments contentedly watches the movement of her slim brown fingers.
"Miss Lefroy, you are throwing the pods into the dish and the peas on the ground. Is that—"
"So I am, so I am!" she answers petulantly. "But I can't do anything when I'm—I'm watched like—that. Mr. Armstrong"—with sudden desperate bluntness—"you have come for your answer, have you not? Well, I have consulted them all, and they think it ought to be 'Yes.'"
"Then you will marry me, Miss Lefroy?"