"Why do you fret so much about it?" asked Rube, sitting beside his promised wife about a week after the old man was laid to rest. "You loved your father, of course, but--" "There's the point!" exclaimed Mell. "I did not love him--not as a child ought to love a parent. What did it matter that his looks were common and his speech rude? His thoughts were true, his motives good, his actions honest, and now I mourn the blindness which made me value him, not for what he was, but what he looked to be. In self-forgetfulness and sacrificing devotion to me he was sublime. He went in rags that I might dress above my station; he ate coarse food that I might be served with dainties; he worked as a slave that I might hold my hands in idleness; and how did I requite him? I was ashamed of him; I held him in contempt. Oh, oh! My, my!" "Come, now," remonstrated Rube, trying to stem the torrent of this lachrymatory deluge, and wondering what had become of all the comforting phrases in the English language, that he could not put his tongue upon one of them. "Do try to calm yourself, dearest. I know you are exaggerating the true state of the case, as we are all prone to do in moments of self-upbraiding. I never saw you lacking in respect to him." "There's a great many bad things in me you never saw," blubbered Mell, breaking out afresh. "Dear, dear!" said Rube, "I never saw such grief as this!" "You--are--disgusted, I know?" "Not a bit of it!" declared Rube; "just the contrary! I fairly dote on the prospect of a wife who is going to cry hard and cut up dreadful when anything happens to a fellow. It kind of makes dying seem sort of easy. But, come, now; you've cried enough. Let me comfort you." "No, no!" cried Mell, shrinking away from him. "If you only knew, you would not want to comfort me. I do not deserve a single kind word from you. I am unworthy your regard. I am a weak woman, and a wicked one. Oh, Rube! I have not treated you right. That day at the picnic I was angry with some one else; I was piqued; I did not feel as I made you think I felt. I--that is--" Here Mell broke down completely in her disjointed arraignment of self, thoroughly disconcerted by the young man's change of countenance. His breath came quick, a dark cloud overspread his features, and he lost somewhat of his ruddy color. "Do you mean, then, to say I was but a tool, and the whole thing a lie and a cheat?" Rube's thoughts sped as directly to their mark, as the well-aimed arrow from the bent bow.