What was it to me that Miss Hammond's cold voice answered,—
"I think you make a fool of yourself, George, and of that girl too, going on as you do about her. She will be entirely unfitted for her state of life, and for the people she must live with."
Her words had hardly time to chill my heart when it bounded again, as I turned hurriedly away and passed under the window on my way out, at hearing her brother's answer:—
"There is too much in her to be spoiled. I like her. She has talent and character, and I cannot understand, Esther, why you are so prejudiced against her."
There were others besides Mr. Hammond who thought me improved and who liked me. Tom Salyers never let an evening pass without dropping into our house on his way home from the store, where he was a sort of overseer or salesman,—never failed to bring in its season the earliest wild-flower or the freshest fruit,—had thoroughly searched Catlettsburg for books to please me,—nay, had once sent an indefinite order to a Cincinnati bookseller to put up twenty dollars' worth of the best books for a lady, which order was filled by a collection of the Annuals of six years back and a few unsalable modern novels. I read them all most conscientiously and gratefully, and would not listen for a moment to Mr. Hammond's jests about them; but, a few weeks afterwards, I almost repented of my complaisance, when Tom Salyers took me at an advantage while rowing me down to Louisa one afternoon, and, seeing a long stretch of river before him without shoal or sand-bar, leisurely laid up his oars, and, letting the boat float with the stream, asked me, abruptly, to marry him, and go with him up into the country to a new place which he meant to clear and farm.
I laughed at him at first, but he persisted till I was forced to believe him in earnest; and then I told him how foolish he was to fancy an ugly, sallow-looking girl like me, who had no father nor mother, when he might take one of John Mills's rosy daughters, or go down to Catlettsburg and get somebody whose father would give him a farm already cleared.
"You are laughing at me, Janet," he said. "I know I am not smart enough for you, nor hardly fit to keep company with you, now that Hammond has taught you so many things that are proper for a lady to know; but I love you true, and if you can only fancy me, I'll work so hard that you'll be able to keep a hired girl and have all your time for reading and going about the woods as you like to do. And you'll be in your own house, instead of under Squire Boarders and his sharp-spoken wife. Couldn't you fancy me after a while? I'd do anything you said to make myself agreeable and fit company for you."
"You are very fit company for me now, Tom," I said, "and you are of a great deal more use in the world than I am; you know more that is worth knowing than I do. Only let us be good friends, as we have always been, and do not talk about anything else."
"I will not talk any more of it now," said he, "if so be it don't please you, and if you'll promise never to say any more to me about the Mills gals, or any of them critters down in Catlettsburg,—I can't abide the sight of them,—and if you'll let me come and see you all the same, and row you about and take you to the mill when you want flour."