Aunt Jane's Nieces at Millville
Beth looked up from her work and smiled.
"Go ahead, Mr. Clark," she said, encouragingly. "My name is Beth. Had
you forgotten it?"
"Call me Skim," he said, gently.
"Very well, Skim,--Now look here, Patsy Doyle, if you're going to sit
there and giggle you'll spoil everything. Mr. Clark wants to court, and
it's getting late."
"P'raps I've went fur enough fer tonight," remarked Skim, uneasily.
"Next time they'll leave us alone, an' then----"
"Oh, don't postpone it, please!" begged Beth, giving the boy a demure
glance from her soft brown eyes. "And don't mind my cousins. I don't."
"These things kain't be hurried," he said. "Si Merkle courted three
weeks afore he popped. He tol' me so."
"Then he was a very foolish man," declared Patsy, positively. "Just look
at Beth! She's dying to have you speak out. What's the use of waiting,
when she knows why you are here?"
By this time Skim had been flattered to the extent of destroying any
stray sense he might ever have possessed. His utter ignorance of girls
and their ways may have been partly responsible for his idiocy, or his
mother's conviction that all that was necessary was for him to declare
himself in order to be accepted had misled him and induced him to
abandon any native diffidence he might have had. Anyway, the boy fell
into the snare set by the mischievous young ladies without a suspicion
of his impending fate.
"Miss Beth," said he, "ef yer willin', I'll marry ye; any time ye say. I
agreed t' help Dick Pearson with the harvestin', but I'll try to' git
Ned Long to take my place, an' it don't matter much, nohow."
"But I couldn't have you break an engagement," cried Beth, hastily.
"Why not?"
"Oh, it wouldn't be right, at all. Mr. Pearson would never forgive me,"
she asserted.
"Can't ye--"
"No; not before harvest, Skim. I couldn't think of it."
"But arterward--"
"No; I've resolved never to marry after harvest. So, as you're engaged,
and I don't approve of breaking engagements, I must refuse your
proposition entirely.
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In a village there lived two men who had the self-same name. Both were named Claus. But one of them owned four horses, and the other owned only one horse; so to distinguish between them people called the man who had four horses Big Claus, and the man who had only one horse Little Claus. Now I'll tell you what happened to these two, for this is a true story.
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