"My--good--gracious--me--alive! Twelve years! Why on earth don't you get
married, Hannah?"
"He cannot afford it, dear; it takes everything he can rake and scrape
to keep his mother and his little brothers and sisters, and even with
all that they often want."
"Well, then, why don't he let you off of your promise?"
"Nora!--what! why we would no sooner think of breaking with each other
than if we had been married, instead of being engaged all these twelve
years!"
"Well, then, when do you expect to be married?"
"I do not know, dear; when his sisters and brothers are all grown up and
off his hands, I suppose."
"And that won't be for the next ten years--even if then! Hannah, you
will be an elderly woman, and he an old man, before that!"
"Yes, dear, I know that; but we must be patient; for everyone in this
world has something to bear, and we must accept our share. And even if
it should be in our old age that Reuben and myself come together, what
of that? We shall have all eternity before us to live together; for,
Nora, dear, I look upon myself as his promised wife for time and
eternity. Therefore, you see there is no such thing possible as for me
to break with Reuben. We belong to each other forever, and the Lord
himself knows it. And now, dear, be quiet and try to sleep; for we must
rise early to-morrow to make up by industry for the time lost to-day;
so, once more, good-night, dear."
Nora responded to this good-night, and turned her head to the wall--not
to sleep, but to muse on those fiery, dark-brown eyes that had looked
such mysterious meanings into hers, and that thrilling deep-toned voice
that had breathed such sweet praise in her ears. And so musing, Nora
fell asleep, and her reverie passed into dreams.
Early the next morning the sisters were up. The weather had changed with
the usual abruptness of our capricious climate. The day before had been
like June. This day was like January. A dark-gray sky overhead, with
black clouds driven by an easterly wind scudding across it, and
threatening a rain storm.
The sisters hurried through their morning work, got their frugal
breakfast over, put their room in order, and sat down to their daily
occupation--Hannah before her loom, Nora beside her spinning-wheel. The
clatter of the loom, the whir of the wheel, admitted of no conversation
between the workers; so Hannah worked, as usual, in perfect silence, and
Nora, who ever before sung to the sound of her humming wheel, now mused
instead. The wind rose in occasional gusts, shaking the little hut in
its exposed position on the hill.