The red sun was hanging in a purplish haze over the edge of the hill as the two descended, and the leaves from Farmer Perkins’s maples rustled softly under their feet. Milton drew near his subject: “I’ve be’n gittin’ on in th’ world sence yeou fust knew me, hain’t I?” “Yes, everybody says so.” “’N’ yit everybody don’t knaow half of it. I ain’t no han’ to tell all I knaow. Ef some folks c’d guess th’ speckle-ations I be’n in, ‘n’ th’ cash I’ve got aout in mor’giges ’n’ sao on, it’d make ’em open their eyes. It’s th’ still saow thet gits th’ swill, as my mother use’ to say, ’n’ I’ve be’n still enough abaout it, I guess.” His coarse chuckle jarred on the girl’s nerves, but the importance of placating him was uppermost in her mind, and she answered, as pleasantly as she could: “I’m sure I’m glad, Milton. You have worked hard all your life, and you deserve it.” “Yeh _air_ glad, reely naow?” “Why yes! Why shouldn’t I be? It always pleases me to hear of people’s prosperity.” “But me purtic’ly?” he persisted, earnestly. “Oh, yes,” she replied, absent-mindedly. Then the odd nature of the question occurred to her, but she was too distrait to think consecutively, and she added no comment to her answer. “Well, it eases me to hear yeh say thet,” he went on, with awkward deliberation, “fer they’s somethin’ I’ve be’n wantin’ to say to yeh fer a long time. I don’t s’paose you reelize haow well off I am?” She did not answer. Her mind seemed to refuse to act, and she heard only the sound of his words. He took her reply for granted and continued: “I c’d eena’most buy up thet farm there”--pointing over to the Fairchild acres on the slope, now within sight--“’n’ I ain’t so all-fired sure yit thet I won’t, nuther! But what’s th’ good o’ money, on-less yeh kin git what yeh want with it, ay?” The impulse of her soul-weariness was to let this aimless question pass like the other, without reply. But she was reminded of the importance of being pleasant to this tedious man, and so answered, entirely at random: “What is it you want, Milton?” “I dunnao--I’m kind o’ feared o’ puttin’ my foot in it; yeh won’t be mad ef I tell yeh?” “Why no, of course not. What is it?” “Well, then,” he blurted out, “I want _yeou!_” The girl looked dumbly at him, at first not realizing at all the meaning of his words, then held as in a vise between the disposition to reply to him as he deserved and the danger, the terrible danger, of angering him. There fluttered through her senses, too, a mad kind of yearning to shriek with laughter--born of the hysterical state of her long-oppressed nerves. She eventually neither rebuked nor laughed, but said vacuously: “Want _me?_” “Ef yeou’ll marry me, I’ll make one o’ th’ fust ladies o’ Dearb’rn Caounty aout o’ yeh. Yeh need never lay yer finger to a stitch o’ work agin, no more’n Is’bel did, daown yander.” He spoke eagerly, with more emotion in his strident voice than she had ever heard there before.