"You haven't even asked me to marry you," she said, voluntarily kissing him and then playfully stroking his lips with her soft, pliant fingers. "You are very strange, John. I always know what you feel—what you think—but you don't say them right out."
"I was afraid," he suddenly confessed. "I've been afraid all along—afraid of something, I don't know what, but afraid you'd refuse me—as—as you did Joel Eperson."
"Refuse you!" kissing him again, and nestling back into his arms. "How could you have thought that?"
"I don't know—but will you—will you?" he asked. "Will you say it to-night in plain words, Tilly? Will you be my wife, and go to Ridgeville with me and live in that little house?"
"How could you doubt it?" she asked, raising her head and looking at him trustfully and admiringly.
"I don't know, but I was afraid," he returned. "Somehow I can't feel that such a big thing could come my way. I want you—God knows I want you, but somehow you seem miles and miles above me. You know so much that I don't know. Every day it seems to me you teach me something I never knew before but—but if you will come with me I'll do everything in my power to make you happy. Will you?"
"Of course I will!" And Tilly kissed him again, and held him at arm's-length for an instant and looked at him proudly. "I am the one that ought to have been afraid," she smiled. "Men pass along and make love to country girls and never see them again. In fact, Sally Teasdale said the other day to me—she is mad on account of me and Joel—she said that you were just a flirt, amusing yourself while you are here. Those are the things a girl has to put up with, John. Sally had her eyes on you at first. She is dying to get married. She thought you were handsome and wonderful in every way till you got to going with me, and now she sniffs and turns up her nose and tries to make me doubt you."
"I never liked her, and she knew it," John said. "But let's not talk about her or any one else. There is no one I care a pin about except you and Sam and his wife."
"Nobody else—nobody?" Tilly asked, slowly. "Why, you told me once that your mother is living, that she is a widow and that you help take care of her!"
Here John's stiff fingers relaxed in their clasp on Tilly's small hand, and with averted face he sat still, silent, and gloomily reminiscent.