"What for?" I says.
"Because I love you," says Luke serious; "and I want you."
I laughed out loud. "Them's funny reasons for a bargain," I says.
He kind of drew off. "Oh, well," he says, "it's all I've got. If you don't think it amounts to anything—"
"That's why you should marry me," I says. "But I want to know why I should marry you."
"Don't you love me?" says Luke.
"I donno," I told him. "I don't like to kiss you so very well."
"Cossy, listen," Luke said. "All that'll come. Honest, it will, dear. Just trust me, and marry me. I need you."
"Well, but, Luke," I says, "I donno if I need you. I don't believe I do."
"You listen here," he says, sort of mad. "You'll have a home of your own—"
"Why, wouldn't I live on your folks's farm?" I says.
"Oh, well, yes," Luke says. "But—I love you, Cossy!" he ends up. "Can't you understand? I love you."
He said it like the reason. I begun to think it was.
"You've got to marry somebody," says Luke.
I knew that well enough. Home was bad enough now, but when one of the boys brought a wife there it would be worse. I'd have to marry somebody.
"I'd like to get away from home," I says. "Ma and I don't get along, and Pa's like a bear the whole time."
"You'd ought not to say such things, Cossy," says Luke.
"Why not?" I says. "They're true. That is about the only reason I can think of why I should marry you. That, and because I've got to marry somebody."
I thought he'd be mad. Instead, he had his arms around me and was kissing me.
"I don't care what you marry me for," he says. "Marry me, anyhow!"
I thought: "I s'pose I'd get used to him. I don't like the boys, either. I can't bear Henny. Every girl seems to act as if it was all right, after she gets away. Maybe it is."
Two people were coming along the path. Luke and I sat still—it was so dark nobody could notice us where we were. I heard them talking and then I heard Ma's voice. I knew right off Henny had told her about Keddie, and she was going to try to get Mis' Bingy to come home with us.
" … On my feet from morning till night," she was saying, "till it seems as though I should drop. I don't know how I stand it."
Pa was with her. "Stand it, stand it!" he says. "Anybody'd think you had the pest in the house. I'm sick of hearin' you whine."
"I know," says Ma, "nobody thinks I'm worth anything now. But after I'm dead and gone—"
"Oh, shut up," says Pa. And they went by us.
I stood up, all of a sudden. Anything would be better than home.
"Luke—" I says.
In a few years maybe him and me would be talking the same as Ma and Pa. Maybe he'd be hanging around the Dew Drop Inn, same as Keddie Bingy. What of it? All women took the chance.
"Luke," I says, "all right."
"Do you mean you will?" says Luke. I liked him the best I'd ever liked him, the way he says that.
"I said 'all right,'" I says. "You be a good husband to me and I'll be a good wife to you."
Luke kind of scared me, he was so glad.
On the way home he didn't talk much. As soon as we got to our house I made him go. I'd begun to feel the tired way I do every time I'm with him—as if I'd ironed or done up fruit.
Ma and Pa hadn't come back yet. I went up to Ma's and my room and lit the lamp. It was on a bracket, and stuck up behind it was a picture of me when I was a baby. I just stood and stared at it. I hadn't thought of it before—but what if Luke and I should have one?
"No, sir! No, sir! No, sir!" I says, all the while I put myself to bed.
CHAPTER II
Toward morning I heard somebody scream. I was dreaming that I was with Luke in the grove, and that he touched my hand, and that it was me that screamed. I heard it again and again, with another noise. Then I woke up. It wasn't me. It was somebody else.
I sat up in bed and shook Ma. She snores, and I couldn't hardly wake her. By the time she sat up I heard Pa move. When we got to the stairs I heard him at the back door.
"What's wanted?" I heard him say.
"Quick, quick! Lemme in! Lemme in!" I heard from outside. I knew it was Mis' Bingy. We got down-stairs just as Pa opened the door, and she come in. Everything about her was blowing—her long hair and her outing nightgown and the baby's shawl. She could hardly breathe, and she leaned against the door and tried to lock it. I went and locked it for her. She sat down, and the baby was awake and crying, so she jounced it up and down, without knowing she was doing it, while she told what was the matter. She twisted up her hair, and I didn't think she knew she done that, either. She had on a blue calico waist to a work dress, over her nightgown, and her bare feet were in shoes, with the laces dangling. Ma took one look at her, and went and put on the teakettle. She said afterward she never knew she done that, either.
Mis' Bingy told us what happened. She had been laying awake up-stairs when he come home. He called her, and she didn't answer. Then he brought a flatiron and beat at the door. Then he yelled that he'd bring the ax. When he went for it, she slipped out of her bedroom and locked the door, and hid in the closet under the stairs till she heard him run up 'em. Then she started.
"He'll kill me," she says. "He said he'd kill me. I've never known him like this before."
Pa come back from his room, part dressed.
"I'll go and get the constable," he says.
"Oh," says Mis' Bingy, "don't arrest him! Don't do that!"
"Lookin' for to be killed?" says Pa. "And us, too, for a-harborin' you here?"
She fell to crying then, and the baby cried. Mis' Bingy said things to herself that we couldn't understand. Ma come and brought her a cup of hot water with the tea that was left in the teapot poured in it. Ma had a calico skirt around her shoulders, and she was in her bare feet.
"He'll kill you," Ma says to Pa, "on your way to the constable. I wouldn't go past that house for anything, to-night."
I remember how anxious she looked at him. She was anxious, like Mis' Bingy'd been when she said not to arrest Keddie.
Pa muttered, but he didn't go out. In a little while, Ma said best get some rest, so we went up to the room again, and took Mis' Bingy. Her and Ma laid down on the bed, and I got the canvas cot that was folded up in there. My feet stuck out, and I couldn't go to sleep. But the funny thing to me was that both Ma and Mis' Bingy went to sleep in a little while.
I laid there, waiting for it to get light. The window was a little bit gray, and off in the wood-lot I could hear a bird wake up and go to sleep again. I liked it. Early in the morning always seemed to me like some other time. Things acted as if they was something else. Even the bureau looked different. … Pretty soon the sky changed, and the dark was thin enough so I could see Ma and Mis' Bingy. Ma's light-colored hair had got all around her face. I thought how young she looked asleep. She looked so little and soft. She looked as if she'd be nice. I guess she would have been if she hadn't had so much to do. I never remembered her when she didn't have too much to do, except once when she broke her arm; and her arm hurt her so that she was cross anyway. Once, when the boys bought