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“I am afraid,” said Jacob, “that she could not leave her home now. She is too useful there, and the family is so poor.”

“Tell them that both your wages, for the first year, shall go to them. It’ll be my business to rake and scrape the money together somehow. Say, too, that the housekeeper’s place can’t be kept for her–must be filled at once. Push matters like a man, if you mean to be a complete one, and bring her here, if she carries no more with her than the clothes on her back!”

During the following days Jacob had time to familiarize his mind with this startling proposal. He knew his father’s stubborn will too well to suppose that it could be changed; but the inevitable soon converted itself into the possible and desirable. The sweet face of Susan as she had stood before him in the wheat-field was continually present to his eyes, and ere long, he began to place her, in his thoughts, in the old rooms at home, in the garden, among the thickets by the brook, and in Ann Pardon’s pleasant parlor. Enough; his father’s plan became his own long before the time was out.

On his second journey everybody seemed to be an old acquaintance and an intimate friend. It was evening as he approached the Meadows farm, but the younger children recognized him in the dusk, and their cry of, “Oh, here’s Jacob!” brought out the farmer and his wife and Susan, with the heartiest of welcomes. They had all missed him, they said–even the horses and oxen had looked for him, and they were wondering how they should get the oats harvested without him.

Jacob looked at Susan as the farmer said this, and her eyes seemed to answer, “I said nothing, but I knew you would come.” Then, first, he felt sufficient courage for the task before him.

He rose the next morning, before any one was stirring, and waited until she should come down stairs. The sun had not risen when she appeared, with a milk-pail in each hand, walking unsuspectingly to the cow-yard. He waylaid her, took the pails in his hand and said in nervous haste, “Susan, will you be my wife?”

She stopped as if she had received a sudden blow; then a shy, sweet consent seemed to run through her heart. “O Jacob!” was all she could say.

“But you will, Susan?” he urged; and then (neither of them exactly knew how it happened) all at once his arms were around her, and they had kissed each other.

“Susan,” he said, presently, “I am a poor man–only a farm hand, and must work for my living. You could look for a better husband.”

“I could never find a better than you, Jacob.”

“Would you work with me, too, at the same place?”

“You know I am not afraid of work,” she answered, “and I could never want any other lot than yours.”

Then he told her the story which his father had prompted. Her face grew bright and happy as she listened, and he saw how from her very heart she accepted the humble fortune. Only the thought of her parents threw a cloud over the new and astonishing vision. Jacob, however, grew bolder as he saw fulfilment of his hope so near. They took the pails and seated themselves beside neighbor cows, one raising objections or misgivings which the other manfully combated. Jacob’s earnestness unconsciously ran into his hands, as he discovered when the impatient cow began to snort and kick.

The harvesting of the oats was not commenced that morning. The children were sent away, and there was a council of four persons held in the parlor. The result of mutual protestations and much weeping was, that the farmer and his wife agreed to receive Jacob as a son-in-law; the offer of the wages was four times refused by them, and then accepted; and the chance of their being able to live and labor together was finally decided to be too fortunate to let slip. When the shock and surprise was over all gradually became cheerful, and, as the matter was more calmly discussed, the first conjectured difficulties somehow resolved themselves into trifles.