He did submit, and Ben married Edith on his twenty-first birthday, and brought her home.
II.
Edith was a quiet little creature, with a soft voice, and a pale, sweet face, and frail figure. She came up to Anson English when she entered the house, and put her hands timidly upon his arms.
"I want you to love me," she said; "I have had no father or mother since I can remember. I want to call you father, and I want to make you happy if I can."
"Well, I'll tell you how," the old man retorted. "Discharge the hired girl, and make good bread. That'll make me happy,"—and he laughed harshly.
Edith shrank from his rough words, so void of the sympathy and love she longed for. But she discharged the girl within a week, and tried to make good bread. It was not a success, however, and the old man was not slow to express his dissatisfaction. Edith left the table in tears.
"Another dribbler—'Liz'beth was always cryin' just that way over every little thing," sighed the old man.
Edith eventually conquered the difficulties of bread making, and became a famous cook. But she did not please her husband's father any the better by this achievement.
"You're always a-fixin' up some new sort of trash for the table," he said to her one day. "Dessert is it, you call it? 'Nuff to make a man's patience desert him to see sugar and flour wasted so. 'Liz'beth liked your fancy cooking, but I cured her of it."