Anne was not without a feeble hope that something might come of it after all. But nothing did. John Douglas came and took Janet driving, and walked home from prayer-meeting with her, as he had been doing for twenty years, and as he seemed likely to do for twenty years more. The summer waned. Anne taught her school and wrote letters and studied a little. Her walks to and from school were pleasant. She always went by way of the swamp; it was a lovely place—a boggy soil, green with the greenest of mossy hillocks; a silvery brook meandered through it and spruces stood erectly, their boughs a-trail with gray-green mosses, their roots overgrown with all sorts of woodland lovelinesses. Nevertheless, Anne found life in Valley Road a little monotonous. To be sure, there was one diverting incident.
She had not seen the lank, tow-headed Samuel of the peppermints since the evening of his call, save for chance meetings on the road. But one warm August night he appeared, and solemnly seated himself on the rustic bench by the porch. He wore his usual working habiliments, consisting of varipatched trousers, a blue jean shirt, out at the elbows, and a ragged straw hat. He was chewing a straw and he kept on chewing it while he looked solemnly at Anne. Anne laid her book aside with a sigh and took up her doily. Conversation with Sam was really out of the question.
After a long silence Sam suddenly spoke.
“I’m leaving over there,” he said abruptly, waving his straw in the direction of the neighboring house.
“Oh, are you?” said Anne politely.
“Yep.”
“And where are you going now?”
“Wall, I’ve been thinking some of gitting a place of my own. There’s one that’d suit me over at Millersville. But ef I rents it I’ll want a woman.”
“I suppose so,” said Anne vaguely.
“Yep.”
There was another long silence. Finally Sam removed his straw again and said,
“Will yeh hev me?”
“Wh—a—t!” gasped Anne.
“Will yeh hev me?”
“Do you mean—MARRY you?” queried poor Anne feebly.
“Yep.”
“Why, I’m hardly acquainted with you,” cried Anne indignantly.
“But yeh’d git acquainted with me after we was married,” said Sam.
Anne gathered up her poor dignity.
“Certainly I won’t marry you,” she said haughtily.
“Wall, yeh might do worse,” expostulated Sam. “I’m a good worker and I’ve got some money in the bank.”
“Don’t speak of this to me again. Whatever put such an idea into your head?” said Anne, her sense of humor getting the better of her wrath. It was such an absurd situation.
“Yeh’re a likely-looking girl and hev a right-smart way o’ stepping,” said Sam. “I don’t want no lazy woman. Think it over. I won’t change my mind yit awhile. Wall, I must be gitting. Gotter milk the cows.”
Anne’s illusions concerning proposals had suffered so much of late years that there were few of them left. So she could laugh wholeheartedly over this one, not feeling any secret sting. She mimicked poor Sam to Janet that night, and both of them laughed immoderately over his plunge into sentiment.
One afternoon, when Anne’s sojourn in Valley Road was drawing to a close, Alec Ward came driving down to “Wayside” in hot haste for Janet.
“They want you at the Douglas place quick,” he said. “I really believe old Mrs. Douglas is going to die at last, after pretending to do it for twenty years.”
Janet ran to get her hat. Anne asked if Mrs. Douglas was worse than usual.
“She’s not half as bad,” said Alec solemnly, “and that’s what makes me think it’s serious. Other times she’d be screaming and throwing herself all over the place. This time she’s lying still and mum. When Mrs. Douglas is mum she is pretty sick, you bet.”
“You don’t like old Mrs. Douglas?” said Anne curiously.
“I like cats as IS cats. I don’t like cats as is women,” was Alec’s cryptic reply.
Janet came home in the twilight.
“Mrs. Douglas is dead,” she said wearily. “She died soon after I got there. She just spoke to me once—‘I suppose you’ll marry John now?’ she said. It cut me to the ............