"That is not saying much."
"I care for you alone in all the world."
"Except yourself."
"Of course."
He breathed as though relieved of a burden.
"Look here, Mehetabel, I've not been a marrying man. Wife and family cost too much. I've been saving and not spending. But this can't go on forever. All good things come to an end some time. It has come to this, I must have a woman to mind the house. My sister and I have had a tiff. You know her, Sarah Rocliffe. She won't do as I like, and what I want. So I'll just shut the door in her face and make a long nose at her, and say, 'Got some one else now.'"
"So," exclaimed Mehetabel, the color rushing to her cheeks in anger, "you want me as your housekeeper that you may make a nose at your sister and deny her the house."
"I won't have any other woman in my house but yourself."
"You will have to wait a long time before you get me."
"I mean all fair and honorable," said Jonas. "I didn't say housekeeper, did I? I say wife. If any chap had said to me, Bideabout, you are putting your feet into a rabbit net, and will be caught, and—'" he made a sign as if knocking a rabbit's neck to kill it—"I say, had any one said that, I'd a' laughed at him as a fool."