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She knew Selena would be down posthaste presently, agog with curiosity to find out who the pedlar was whom Mattie had delighted to honour with an invitation to tea. Mattie preferred to meet Selena out of doors. It was easier to thrust and parry there. Meanwhile, she wanted to think over things. Fifteen years before Jedediah Crane had been Mattie Adams's beau.
He turned in under the willows and clinked musically into Mattie's yard. At least, the rattle of the tin-wagon sounded musically to Mattie. Meanwhile, Selena watched from her window and raged. Amberley people shrugged their shoulders when gossip noised the matter abroad.
Well, I've done all I can all I'm going to do. If Jed's determined to go, he must go, I s'pose." Mattie would not let herself cry, although she felt like it. She went out and picked apples instead. Mattie might have remained so and Jedediah's romance might never have reached a better ending, if it had not been for Selena, who came over just then to help Mattie pick the golden russets.
Thereafter Jed called at the Adams place every week. Generally he stayed to tea. Mattie always bought something of him to colour an excuse. Her kitchen fairly glittered with new tinware. She gave Selena the overflow by way of heaping coals of fire.
Jedediah was as brimful of happiness as mortal man could be, and his rosy thoughts flowed forth in a kind of triumphant chant which would have driven Selena stark distracted had she been within hearing distance. What he said too was but a poor expression of what he thought, but to the trees and fields and pony he chanted, "Well, this is romance. What else would you call it now?
After spending a few days in London trying to get warm, they moved on to Paris, which they remembered long afterward on account of Napoleon's Tomb and the price of Strawberries. Selena pulled her tall-grass French on a Hackman, but there was nothing doing. He had taken it from a different Teacher. So they employed a Guide who knew all the Shops.
The Tradesman, Edwin by name, and his Managing Director, Selena, formed the magic-lantern Habit away back in the days of Stoddard. They never missed a chance to take in Burton Holmes. Sitting in the darkness, they would hold hands and simply eat those Colored Slides. Selena belonged to a Club that was trying to get a side-hold on the Art and Architecture of the Old World.
"Who was that pedlar that was here this afternoon, Mattie?" she demanded as soon as she arrived. Mattie smiled. "Jed Crane," she said. "He's home from the West and driving a tin-wagon for the Boones." Selena gave a little gasp. She sat down on the lowest step and untied her bonnet strings. "Mattie Adams! And you kept him hanging about the whole afternoon." "Why not?" said Mattie wickedly.
As for the Cranes well, they were lazy and shiftless, for the most part. It would be a mésalliance for an Adams to marry a Crane. Still, it would doubtless have happened for Mattie, though a meek-looking damsel, had a mind of her own had it not been for Selena Ford, Mattie's older sister.
It was strange he should come back like this "romantic," as he said himself. Mattie's reverie was interrupted by Selena. Angular, pale-eyed Mrs. Ford was as unlike the plump, rosy Mattie as a sister could be. Perhaps her chronic curiosity, which would not let her rest, was accountable for her excessive leanness.
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