"I don't know," said Mary, innocently.
"Well, I suppose everybody would hold up their hands; and yet, if I do say it myself,"—she added, coloring,—"there are not many girls who could make a better minister's wife than I could, if I had a mind to try."
"That I am sure of," said Mary, warmly.
"I guess you are the only one that ever thought so," said Cerinthy, giving an impatient toss. "There's father and mother all the while mourning over me; and yet I don't see but what I do pretty much all that is done in the house, and they say I am a great comfort in a temporal point of view. But, oh, the groanings and the sighings that there are over me! I don't think it is pleasant to know that your best friends are thinking such awful things about you, when you are working your fingers off to help them. It is kind o' discouraging, but I don't know what to do about it";—and for a few moments Cerinthy sat demolishing buttercups, and throwing them up in the air till her shiny black head was covered with golden flakes, while her cheeks grew redder with something that she was going to say next.
"Now, Mary, there is that creature. Well, you know, he won't take 'No' for an answer. What shall I do?"
"Suppose, then, you try 'Yes,'" said Mary, rather archly.
"Oh, pshaw! Mary Scudder, you know better than that, now. I look like it, don't I?"
"Why, yes," said Mary, looking at Cerinthy, deliberately; "on the whole, I think you do."
"Well! one thing I must say," said Cerinthy,—"I can't see what he finds in me. I think he is a thousand times too good for me. Why, you have no idea, Mary, how I have plagued him. I believe that man really is a Christian," she added, while something like a penitent tear actually glistened in those sharp, saucy, black eyes. "Besides," she added, "I have told him everything I could think of to discourage him. I told him that I had a bad temper, and didn't believe the doctrines, and couldn't promise that I ever should; and after all, that creature keeps right on, and I don't know what to tell him."
"Well," said Mary, mildly, "do you think you really love him?"