Abner flushed. "I can promise you that, I think." "You must." "I do." "We will dismiss the new theory." "If you demand it." The idea of limited matrimonial partnership therefore passed away. Then there loomed up the question of an engagement-ring. "You agree with me, I hope," said Abner, "that all these symbolical follies might very well be done away with?" "No," said Medora firmly; "folly--sheer, utter folly--claims me for a month at least. And as for symbols, they are the very bread of the race, and I am as much of the human tribe as anybody else is." A few days later Medora was wearing her engagement-ring. This step accomplished, Abner felt himself free to scale down to a minimum the customary attentions of a courtship. Medora protested. "You are no more than a man, and I am no less than a woman. You must give all that a man is expected to give and I must have all that a woman is accustomed to receive." The engagement lasted through the summer, and Medora was married at the farm in October. Abner's parents came the thirty miles across country to their son's wedding. His father disclosed a singularly buoyant and expansive nature; he lived in the blessings the day brought forth, and considered not too deeply--as the poet once counselled--the questions that had kept his son in the fume and heat of unquenchable discussion. Mrs. Joyce was quiet, demure, rock-rooted in her self-respecting gravity--a sweet, sympathetic, winning little woman. She advanced at once into the bustle of the household, and it was plain that nature had endowed her with a fondness for work for work's very sake, and that she was proud of her own activity and thoroughness. Abner, everybody saw, was immensely wrapped up in her. "A man who makes such a good son," said Giles to his wife, "will make a good husband." "I expect him to," said Medora, overhearing. "And I intend to put on the last few finishing touches myself." XXIV One after another several carriages dismissed their occupants with slams that carried far and wide on the crisp air of the early December evening, and a variety of muffled figures toiled up the broad granite steps and disappeared in the maw of the cavernous round-arched entrance-porch. At both front and flank of the house a score of curtained windows permitted the escape of hints of hospitable intentions; and in point of fact Mr. and Mrs. Palmer Pence were giving a dinner for Mr. and Mrs. Adrian Bond.