Grandma often told me that now I was getting pretty nearly old enough to be married, or would be when I was twenty-one, which would be in July--"Though," she always said, "I don't believe in folks's being married under the spell of puppy love. Thirty is soon enough; but yet, you might do well to marry when you are a little younger, because you need a wife to keep you clean and tidy, and you can support a wife." She began bringing girls with her to help fix my house up; and she would always show them the castor and my other things. "Dat bane for Christina," said Magnus one time, when she was showing my castor and a nice white china dinner set, to Kittie Fleming or Dose Roebuck, both of whom were among her samples of girls shown me. "An' dat patent churn--dat bane for Christina, too, eh, Yake?" "Christina who?" asked Grandma Thorndyke sharply. "Christina Quale," said Magnus, "my cousin in Norvay." This was nuts and apples for Grandma Thorndyke and the girls who came. Magnus showed them Christina's picture, and told them that I had a copy of it, and all about what a nice girl Christina was. Now grandma made a serious thing of this and soon I had the reputation of being engaged to Magnus's cousin, who was the daughter of a rich farmer, and could write English; and even that I had received a letter from her. This seemed unjust to me, though I was a little mite proud of it; for the letter was only one page written in English in one of Magnus's. All the time grandma was bringing girls with her to help, and making me work with them when I helped. They were nice girls, too--Kittie, and Dose, Lizzie Finster, and Zeruiah Strickler, and Amy Smith--all farmer girls. Grandma was always talking about the wisdom of my marrying a farmer girl. "The best thing about Christina," said she, "is that she is the daughter of a farmer." I struggled with this Christina idea, and tried to make it clear that she was nothing to me, that it was just a joke. Grandma Thorndyke smiled. "Of course you'd say that," said she. But the Christina myth grew wonderfully, and it made me more interesting to the other girls. "You look too high For things close by, And slight the things around you!" So sang Zeruiah Strickler as she scrubbed my kitchen, and in pauses of her cheerful and encouraging song told of the helplessness of men without their women. I really believed her, in spite of my success in getting along by myself. "Why don't you bring Virginia out some day?" I asked on one of these occasions, when it seemed to me that Grandma Thorndyke was making herself just a little too frequent a visitor at my place.