"I've been saving every nickel I made for nearly twenty years
to buy back our place. From all the talk we heard last spring, Sis
Lizzie rather allowed you was going to get married."
"Well, I am not."
"I am glad of it. Folks are keen enough to believe in every beau a
girl has 'til she's thirty. After that they don't believe in any of
them. Sis was misled by what they told her over at the Wickers'."
"What did they tell her?" asked Miss Lady, training a rebellious moon
vine up the trellis.
"Oh, they told her about that young city fellow you was rampaging all
over the country with last spring. Mrs. Wicker said he hadn't a
thought in his head but you. That he wore her plumb out telling her
about you, just as if she hadn't help raise you on a bottle!"
Miss Lady still found the vine absorbing, but she took time to say
over her shoulder:
"Tell your sister and Mrs. Wicker that that young man has gone to
China."
"Well, nobody could wish him further! I hope he will stay. You are too
nice a girl to get married. What do women want to marry for anyway?
Look at me! Forty years single and not one minute of it spent in
wishing I was married! I glory in my independence, I glory in my
freedom.
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