“Co’se hit stands to reason that a gyurl’s gotten to git a man or be plumb looked down on,” she continued, a note of finality in her voice. “Yo’ hain’t aimin’ to be a’ ol’ maid, air yo’, Mellie? Well, yo’ shorely air hailed that-a-way. Me’n Dave Wilson was ma’ied befo’ I was sixteen. When he up’n died I mo’ned a fittin’ time and then tuk yo’ paw. I met up with Shep ayfter yo’ po’ paw died. All told I haint be’n a widow more’n fo’ years.” The pardonable complacency of success voiced itself in Mirandy Wilson-Briscoe-Chunn’s recital. “This yere kentry’s full of men an’ taint no trick to make ’em think this yearth won’t turn ’f they-all don’t git you. But yo’ cayn’t do hit by folding yo’ hands in yo’ lap and actin’ like men folks plumb skeer yo’ to death. Yo’ got to show ’em yo’re right smart partial to ’em. An’ yit yo’ got to keep ’em jubious. Naow the’ was Jim Dascom, jes’ possessed to git you-all. He plumb thought the world an’ all of yo’. Him a-comin’ yere an’ a-comin’, slickin’ up to go co’tin’ ever’ last night, an’ yo’ takin’ on like he was p’isen. Consequence is, he up an’ tuk Seliny. ’N she c’udn’t hold a candle to you-all fer looks.” The averted eyes of the slim, young thing looked wistfully across the slash to the bayou beyond. A poignant shame flooded her, the sense of sacred things profaned. Oh, if only her mother had lived, the girl mother who had died at her birth! Surely she would have understood! Or even the quiet slow-speeched father who had petted and “muched” her in secret. Since his death, ten years before, she had been terribly alone. She had only Jed—Jed Wilson, her stepmother’s boy, the magnificent big brother of her youth, who could do everything well and yet condescended to like her and be her comrade. But Jed was in far-away Texas somewhere and had been for four years. “So I jes’ natchelly makes up my mind to help yo’. I ’low to do by you-all like yo’ own maw would. Air yo’ near through with them peas? I want ’em done right spank at twelve. Mose Hughey’s a-comin’ to dinner.” Mellie turned a startled face on her stepmother. Her lips parted for speech, but the protest died unvoiced. What she had feared had come at last. A kind of terror surged through her. She was being prepared for the inevitable. If Mrs. Chunn had set her iron will on her marrying Hughey there would be no escape for her. Yet she knew she would rather die. “I don’t want to—to marry,” she besought. “I druther stay with yo’, Maw.” The girl’s sweet, slow voice seemed to caress the dialect and make it lovable. “You-all have always be’n so good to me sence I was a little trick. Don’t yo’ make me marry ary man, Maw Chunn.” “Hit ce’tainly riles me to hear you-all talk that-a-way. Hit’s plumb foolish. I reckon yo’ got to do like other folkses, Mellie Briscoe. But yo’ ain’t time to talk about that naow. Yo’ run along an’ slick up. I’ll ’tend to the dinner.”