"But my mind is on _you_, Vesty. Now, before we touch the shore, when will you marry me?" "I've been thinking. O Note, perhaps it isn't my place to marry you; perhaps I wouldn't do you any good to marry you, Note. They say you were first in your class, off there, and there are so many things for you, and your mother, and friends, will help you so much more--if I don't." "I may as well tell you the truth, Vesty. I'm not that strong person that I look"--the angels that he saw, flying up, will forgive that sly smile on the boy's mouth--"I couldn't go away and leave you, and go into that false, feverish struggle out there, and live anything more than the wreck of a life, at least. I'm affected." "Where is it that you have such trouble, Note?" "It 's my heart, Vesty Kirtland. I must have a Basin for my wife, calm, strong, sweet; one who can see the 'angels' now and then--just you, in fact." He handed her out of the boat and walked home with her. At the edge of the alders they stood. They could see the light in her father's house. "When, Vesty?" he repeated. "O Note, I love you!" she sobbed; "but I must have a little time to think. Every girl has that." "Very well. You must _keep your mind on me_, however." "Hark! hear the poplars tremble. You know what always makes them sigh and shiver that way, Note?" "I've forgotten." "They made the cross for Christ out of the poplars; they never got over it--see them shiver!--hush!" "O my beautiful one!" He took her hands. "What was it you 'told them' back there this morning, Vesty, before we started?" "You are cruel! O Note!" He drew her to him. Her lips would not tell. Her Basin eyes, that he was gazing mercilessly into, betrayed her. "Good child! sweet child! with my strong right arm, and a willingness for all toil and patience and endeavor, and all my soul's love, I thee endow." He kissed her solemnly. "Love, love, love," chanted in ecstasy a thrush from the dim recesses of the wood. V COLUMBUS AND THE EGG, AND LOT'S WIFE "I often thinks o' Columbus and the egg. All them big folks in Spain was settin' areound, ye know, ta'ntin' of him, and sayin' as how an egg couldn't be made to sot. "So Columbus, he took one up and give her a tunk, pretty solid, deown onto the table. 'There!' says he; 'you stay sot,' says he, 'and keep moderate a spall,' says he. 'Forced-to-go never gits far,' says he. "Then there was Lot's wife. "I don't remember jest the partickelers, nor what she was turnin' areound to look for; whether she was goin' to a sewin'-circle and lookin' back to see what Lot was dewin' to home, or whether she was jest strokin' deown her polonaise a little, the way women does; but anyway, she was one o' this 'ere kind that needed moderatin'. "So she got turned into a pillar o' salt, and there she sot. But I've heerd lately that she 's got up and went?" "I don't know," I murmured.