"Well, you go ahead and tell me about it," Ann said, consolingly, as she threw the sample of soil down and wiped her hand on her apron. "I think it’s powerful odd the way things have turned around, anyway. Only a few days ago if anybody had told me I’d ever be half-way friendly with a daughter of Jane Hemingway, I’d have thought they was clean off their base. I’m trying to act the impartial friend to you, child, but I don’t know that I can. The trouble is, my flesh is too weak. It’s only fair to tell you that I come in the breadth of a hair the other day of betraying you outright to your mammy. She met me down the road and drove me too far. She caught me off my guard and came at me in her old, catlike way, spitting and snarling—a thing I’m not proof against. She was gloating over me. I’m ashamed to say it to a sweet, trusting face like yours, but she came charging on me at such a rate that she drove away my best intentions and made me plumb forget what I was trying to do for you." Ann hung her head for a moment, almost sheepishly kicking a cotton-stalk from its mellow hill with the toe of her shoe. "Don’t bother about that," Virginia said, sweetly. "I know how she can exasperate any one." "Well, I’m satisfied I won’t do to trust in the capacity of a friend, anyway," Ann said, frankly. "I reckon I would be safe with anybody but that woman. There is no use telling you what I said, but I come in an inch of giving you plumb away. I come that nigh injuring a pure, helpless little thing like you are to hit her one sousing lick. As it was, I think I cowed her considerable. She’s superstitious, and she broods as much over an imaginary trouble as a real one. The Lord knows I’ve been busy enough in my life tackling the genuine thing." "I wanted to tell you," Virginia said, "that ever since Langdon Chester got back from Atlanta he has been trying to meet me, and—" "The dirty scamp!" Ann broke in, angrily. "I told him if he ever dared to—" "Wait a minute, Mrs. Boyd!" Virginia put out her hand and touched the old woman’s arm. "He seems awfully upset over what has happened. I never saw any one change so completely. He looked very thin, his eyes were bloodshot, and he shook all over like a man who has been on a long spree. Mrs. Boyd, he came—and I’m sure he was serious—to ask me to marry him." "Marry him? Why, child, you don’t mean _that_—surely you don’t mean—" "I only know what he said," Virginia declared. "He says he is absolutely miserable over it all and wants me to marry him. His cousin, Chester Sively, advised him to propose to me, and he did. He says he loves me, and that nothing else will satisfy him."