Mehetabel was surprised, troubled. She made no response, but color drifted across her face.
"After all," pursued Mrs. Verstage, "he may ha' come here not after liquor, but drawed by you. Then you see he's been alone all these years, and scriptur' saith it ain't good for a man to be that. They goes sour and mouldy—men do if unmarried. I think you'd be fulfillin' your dooty, and actin' accordin' to the word o' God if you took him."
"I—mother! I!" The girl shrank back. "Mother, let him take some one else. I don't want him."
"But he wants you, and he don't want another. Matabel, it's all moonshine about leap year. The time never comes when the woman can ax the man. It's tother way up—and Providence made it so. Bideabout has a good bit o' land, for which he is his own landlord, he has money laid by, so folks tell. You might do worse. It's a great complerment he's paid you. You see he's well off, and you have nothin'. Men generally, nowadays, look out for wives that have a bit o' money to help buy a field, or a cow, or nothin' more than a hog. You see Bideabout's above that sort o' thing. If you can't have butter to your bread, you must put up wi' drippin."
"I'm not going to take Bideabout," said Mehetabel.
"I don't say you should. But he couldn't a took a fancy to you wi'out Providence ordainin' of it."
"And if I don't like him," threw in the girl, half angry, half in tears, "I suppose that is the doings of Providence too?"
Mrs. Verstage evaded a reply to this. She said: "I do not press you to take him. You are kindly welcome to stay on with us a bit, till you've looked about you and found another. We took you up as a babe and cared for you; but the parish allowance was stopped when you was fourteen. It shan't be said of us that bare we took you in and bare we turn you out. But marry you must. It's ordained o' nature. There's the difference atwixt a slug and a snail. The snail's got her own house to go into. A slug hasn't. When she's uncomfortable she must go underground."
The hostess was silent for awhile. Mehetabel said nothing. Her cheeks burned. She was choking.
Mrs. Verstage went on: "There was Betsy Purvis—she was a bit of a beauty, and gave herself airs. She wouldn't have Farmer James, as his legs was so long, he looked like a spider—and she wouldn't have Odger Kay, as his was too short—he looked like a dachs-dog. It came in the end she married Purvis, who had both his legs shot off in the wars, 'cos and why? she couldn't get another. She'd been too finical in choosin'."