"But you'll never get the other, not till the moon's cheese, so there's no sense in vrothering about that. And I want Ellen to marry you, Arthur, since she's after you. I never meant her to marry yet awhiles, but reckon I can't make her happy at home--I've tried and I can't--so you may as well try." "It ud be difficult to make Ellen happy--she's a queer liddle dentical thing." "I know, but marriage is a wonderful soberer-down. She'll be happy once she gets a man and a house of her own." "I'm not so sure. Anyways I'm not the man for her. She should ought to marry a gentleman." "Well, there ain't none for her to marry, nor likely to be none. She'll go sour if she has to stand ... and she wants you, Arthur. I wouldn't be asking you this if I hadn't seen she wanted you, and seen too as the best thing as could happen to her would be for her to marry you." "I'm sure she'll never take me." "You can but ask her." "She'll say 'No.'" "Reckon she won't--but if she does, there'll be no harm in asking her." "You queer me, Jo--it seems a foolish thing to marry Ellen when I want to marry you." "But I tell you, you can never marry me. You're a stupid man, Arthur, who won't see things as they are. You go hankering after whom you can't get, and all the time you might get someone who's hankering after you. It's a lamentable waste, I say, and I'll never be pleased if you don't ask Ellen. It ain't often I ask you to do anything to please me, and this is no hard thing. Ellen's a fine match--a pretty girl, and clever, and well-taught--she'll play the piano to your friends. And I'll see as she has a bit of money with her. You'll do well for yourself by taking her, and I tell you, Arthur, I'm sick and tired of your dangling after me." Sec.14 Joanna had many more conversations with Arthur Alce, and in the end bore down his objections. She used her tongue to such good purpose that by next Sunday he had come to see that Ellen wanted him, and that for him to marry her would be the best thing for everyone--Joanna, Ellen and himself. After all, it wasn't as if he had the slightest chance of Joanna--she had made that abundantly clear, and his devotion did not feed on hope so much as on a stale content in being famous throughout three marshes as her rejected suitor. Perhaps it was not amiss that her sudden call should stir him into a more active and vital service.