Romulus Patten spoke out frankly. He had "taken to" Narcissa from the first moment he saw her. When was that? Well, it wasn't long ago, it was true. It was only yesterday; but he wasn't one to change, and he had never seen a girl yet that he would look twice at. And when she came, in all that awful storm, just to tell him,--here the young man choked a little, and the woman liked him the better for it,--he made up his mind then, he went on, all in a minute, that she should be his wife; and she should, if so be she was willing. He would go back to the place and see if he could get a job in the garden; he might have had one now, but he was some tired and had thought it would rest him to travel a spell. He would quit travelling now, and had little doubt that he could have a good place. He knew of a pleasant rent--in that part of the country a hired tenement is known as a "rent"--with four rooms, that belonged to a friend of his, and he could get that, he guessed. In short, the sooner Narcissa got away from Uncle Pinker the better, in his opinion, and he was ready to take her, the first day she would go. That was all he had to say for himself; but he presumed Mr. Brown would give him a character if he was asked. He had worked for Browns three years, and had no reason to think they weren't satisfied with him. When Romulus had finished his little speech, which left him flushed and tremulous, yet with a brave light in his eyes, and a tender look as he glanced towards his love where she lay sleeping quietly, Mrs. Transom gazed at him for a while in silence; then she held out her hand and grasped his heartily. "I guess you'll do," she said. "I guess you're the right sort. Now, I'll tell you what. You go along and get your place, and see about your rent. Don't engage it, but get the refusal of it, if it belongs to a friend, as you say. Then you come back here and find your girl all well and peart again, and you say your say, and let her say hers. You don't want to take advantage of her being sick and weakly now--now, you no need to flare up! I say you don't want to, and I mean it. You'll need a box of my salve, if you're so thin-skinned as all that comes to. "You go along, I say, and when you come back, come over to my place, Tupham Corner, third house from the cross-road, white house with a yeller door. Everybody knows Mis' Transom's house. You'll find your gal there, and you'll marry her there, with her mother's cousin to stand up with her. There, don't be scairt! Pity some gals haven't got the trick of blushin' as you have, young man. I've got as good a black silk as any in Tupham or Cyrus, and nobody's goin' to say 'Bloomer Joe' round where my own folks live, you'd better believe. What say? Like my idee, or have you got a better one yourself?"