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At the time the Wesley boys were away from home, but the household was still sufficiently numerous, consisting of the Rev. Samuel, Mrs. Wesley, seven daughters, Emilia, Susannah, Maria, Mehetabel, Anne, Martha, and Kezziah, a man servant named Robert Brown, and a maid servant known as Nanny Marshall.
He picked up his hat and was turning to go, when the door opened and Mrs. Wesley appeared. "My dear," said the Rector, "the name of this honest man is Wright Mr. William Wright, a plumber, of Lincoln. To my surprise he has just done me the honour of offering to marry Mehetabel." Mrs. Wesley turned from the bowing Mr. Wright and fastened on her husband a look incredulous but scared.
Indeed, I know my life would have been very different now if I had married Mehetabel if I had married Mehetabel." His vivacity was gone, a sudden cloud had come over his bright face, his figure seemed to have collapsed, the light seemed to have faded out of his hair. With a shuffling step, the very antithesis of his brisk, elastic tread, he turned to the door and passed into the road.
"Why, yes, Mehetabel," she said, leaning far down into the huge churn for the last golden morsels "why, yes, start another quilt if you want to. I've got a lot of pieces from the spring sewing that will work in real good." Mehetabel tried honestly to make her see that this would be no common quilt, but her limited vocabulary and her emotion stood between her and expression.
And when the day came round, Mehetabel set out with Jimmy on her back, and her younger sister by her side. When they returned, Mrs. Garfield and Thomas eagerly questioned the scholars, who declared that they had had "such a good time." Full of excitement, they described the events of the day, and regarded the twenty-one scholars present as a most astonishing number.
It was in the New England days, when an unmarried woman was an old maid at twenty, at forty was everyone's servant, and at sixty had gone through so much discipline that she could need no more in the next world. Aunt Mehetabel was sixty-eight. She had never for a moment known the pleasure of being important to anyone.
For several minutes he smoked in silence, a vague, troubled look playing over his countenance. Presently this passed away, and he fixed his gray eyes speculatively upon my face. "If I had married Mehetabel," said Mr. Jaffrey, slowly, and then he hesitated. I blew a ring of smoke into the air, and, resting my pipe on my knee, dropped into an attitude of attention.
Will you not let me feel that I am earning something more? that if, as times goes on, my conduct pleases you, you will be more disposed to consider to grant me " "Mehetabel!" "I love him, papa! I cannot help it. Sir !" She put out both hands to him, her eyes welling. But he had turned sharply away from her cry, and strode across the room in his irritation.
"But why interrupt a man, sir, when he's thinking of higher things, and with his hand 'most too shaky to hold a pen?" The Rector walked to the window and stood waiting while the receipt was made out: then took the paper, went to the cupboard and filed it, locked the door and resumed his seat. "Now, sir, let me understand your further business. You desire, I gather, to marry my daughter Mehetabel?"
One of the neighbors, who took the long journey to the fair, reported that the quilt was hung in a place of honor in a glass case in "Agricultural Hall." But that meant little to Mehetabel's utter ignorance of all that lay outside of her brother's home. The family noticed the old woman's depression, and one day Sophia said kindly, "You feel sort o' lost without the quilt, don't you, Mehetabel?"
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