“If I didn’t know you’d lost what little sense the Lord gave you, Lyddy Bird, I’d box your ears for your impudence. I’ll go when I get ready, miss. I didn’t tell Caroline you _said_ you intended her to marry David—I know you’ve never said a word about it: I just took it as a matter of course. Chadwell and I feel it our duty to provide for her—not in money, of course; she has quite a tidy little fortune of her own, and of course you and John Bird expect to leave David all you’ve got; they won’t need anything from us. But we want to see her settled: an’ David’s steady an’ reliable an’ a real good business boy, for all you’ve raised him so harum-scarum; an’ it stands to reason, with your keepin’ Caroline all the time like you did, an’ throwin’ away the good stout clothes I provided for her to waste your own money in fol-de-rols, an’ good as adoptin’ her, you might say, that you’d picked her out for David an’ meant to leave them your money. Don’t you?” I swept together my floating wits, steadied them with a supreme effort, and considered for an instant, while I felt Cousin Jane’s angry stare battering at my closed lids. I must tell her something, and nothing. “Caro and David are like our own children,” I said weakly; “we want their happiness, and nothing else. If they love one another as brother and sister, it’s quite to be expected, don’t you think? Whatever made you think we wanted a marriage, brought up as they have been?” “Do you mean you won’t leave them the money?” “I mean money has nothing to do with it. We expect to do all we can for them, and to let them be happy in their own ways, not in ours.” “Well, any way suits Caroline that’s not my way an’ that makes mischief—I can see that plain enough, an’ I told her so. I scolded her good. An’ it’s my opinion David’s in love with her. I caught him lookin’ at her one day when they were fishin’ down by the mill, an’ I just happened to go by in the buggy. I couldn’t get a word out of him when I asked him about it; an’ when I told him I’d given Caroline a talkin’-to, an’ I’d set my head on his havin’ her, he glared at me as if I was tryin’ to murder him, an’ told me to let Caroline alone, an’ let her marry whoever she wanted to. He ain’t been near me since, an’ won’t hardly speak to me; an’ Caroline behaved like a spitfire when I went to her about it. But I believe David’s willin’ if she’d be—but she ain’t, yet. You may as well know there’s goin’ to be trouble when she comes home. It ain’t like it used to be; an’ you’d better get up out of that bed an’ be gettin’ ready to help straighten things out.” How much longer she would have stayed there I don’t know. Her voice, near and strident as it was, was drifting off into a world that seemed far away, when the door opened with soft quickness and David was in the room.