“You oughtn’t to have hid; I want to talk up a scheme with you right off. It popped into my head since I got off the train.” “What scheme?” said Beetrus, hugging her shawl and looking over her shoulder to simulate complete indifference. “You know well enough, or can guess. We mustn’t be parted, my dear girl; I can’t run up to New Harmony every time I make a trip down this way. Think of the long winter. Don’t you want to see me this winter?” “Oh--yes,” she admitted, with a gasp. “I want to see you. I want to have you entirely to myself, to look forward to every time I come in off the road. Let’s get married.” Beetrus visibly expanded and contracted with a great breath. “Get on the train and go over to Evansville with me, and we’ll have the minister tie the knot there. Then home. And a nice little private set of rooms, all quiet and to ourselves, and no relations to bother us.” “But ma’s fixed things to go up to New Harmony for the winter,” whispered Beetrus, struggling with this vision. “And she wouldn’t change her mind so suddenly--’specially as she doesn’t know you real well.” “It isn’t ma I want to marry,” argued Poundstone, using his winning smile. “I’ll drop my relations, and you can surely do the same.” “Drop ma!” The girl was stung by a covert insult. “Leave her a little while. Let her go up to New Harmony, you know.” “And what do you mean about dropping your relations?” demanded Beetrus, growing straighter and more self-assured, and burning more vividly in the cheeks. “That they wouldn’t want to be acquainted with ma and me? No, sir; I ain’t going to let her go up to New Harmony alone; and I never would seriously have you unless she knew all about it and was willing. She might have read your letters if she wanted to; she knows about them. I never did anything in my life that ma told me not to do.” “I thought five minutes’ talk on this subject would bring you to reason,” remonstrated Poundstone. “Then you didn’t calculate right.” “So it seems.” “I’m not the girl you took me for.” “Do you want to break off with me entirely?” he exclaimed, with heat. “Yes--come to that--I do!” cried Beetrus, flinging his letters at him, two fluttering uncertain, but one moulded by the grip of her hand and darting like a missile. “I believed in you, and see how you’ve treated me!” “My darling girl!” “Don’t you come around in my sight any more. And go marry somebody that won’t cause any _dropping_. I can stand it.” “I believe you can,” he sneered. “Yes, indeed; I can stand it. So good-by to you.” Saying which, Beetrus turned and scudded off, through Spanish needles and boggy spots, until his first half-uttered remonstrance had been for some time changed into language of another sort. It seemed long before Beetrus found a log on which she could draw herself, face downward, with her arms stretched beyond her head.