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For the next four weeks the story haunted Young Thomas like a spectre. Down it would not. Everywhere he went he was joked about it. It gathered fresh detail every week. Adelia was getting her clothes ready; she was to be married in seal-brown cashmere; Vinnie Lawrence at Valley Centre was making it for her; she had got a new hat with a long ostrich plume; some said white, some said grey.

Young Thomas kept wondering who the man could be, for he was convinced that Adelia was going to marry somebody. More than that, once he caught himself wondering enviously. Adelia was a nice-looking woman, and he had not so far heard of any probable housekeeper.

“Dang it all,” said Young Thomas to himself in desperation. “I wouldn’t care if it was true.”

His married sister from Carlisle heard the story and came over to investigate. Young Thomas denied it shortly, and his sister scolded. She had devoutly hoped it was true, she said, and it would have been a great weight off her mind.

“This house is in a disgraceful condition, Thomas,” she said severely. “It would break Mother’s heart if she could rise out of her grave to see it. And Adelia Williams is a perfect housekeeper.”

“You didn’t use to think so much of the Williams crowd,” said Young Thomas drily.

“Oh, some of them don’t amount to much,” admitted Maria, “but Adelia is all right.”

Catching sight of an odd look on Young Thomas’s face, she added hastily, “Thomas Everett, I believe it’s true after all. Now, is it? For mercy’s sake don’t be so sly. You might tell me, your own and only sister, if it is.”

“Oh, shut up,” was Young Thomas’s unfeeling reply to his own and only sister.

Young Thomas told himself that night that Valley View gossip would drive him into an asylum yet if it didn’t let up. He also wondered if Adelia was as much persecuted as himself. No doubt she was. He never could catch her eye in church now, but he would have been surprised had he realized how many times he tried to.

The climax came the third week in May, when Young Thomas, who had been keeping house for himself for three weeks, received a letter and an express box from his cousin, Charles Everett, out in Manitoba. Charles and he had been chums in their boyhood. They corresponded occasionally still, although it was twenty years since Charles had gone west.

The letter was to congratulate Young Thomas on his approaching marriage. Charles had heard of it through some Valley View correspondents of his wife. He was much pleased; he had always liked Adelia, he said–had been an old beau of hers, in fact. Thomas might give her a kiss for him if he liked. He forwarded a wedding present by express and hoped they would be very happy, etc.

The present was an elaborate hatrack of polished buffalo horns, mounted on red plush, with an inset mirror. Young Thomas set it up on the kitchen table and scowled moodily at his reflection in the mirror. If wedding presents were beginning to come, it was high time something was done. The matter was past being a joke. This affair of the present would certainly get out–things always got out in Valley View, dang it all–and he would never hear the last of it.

“I’ll marry,” said Young Thomas decisively. “If Adelia Williams won’t have me, I’ll marry the first woman who will, if it’s Sarah Barnett herself.”

Young Thomas shaved and put on his Sunday suit. As soon as it was safely dark, he hied him away to Adelia Williams. He felt very doubtful about his reception, but the remembrance of the twinkle in Adelia’s brown eyes comforted him. She looked like a woman who had a sense of humour; she might not take him, but she would not feel offended or insulted because he asked her.

“Dang it all, though, I hope she will take me,” said Young Thomas. “I’m in for getting married now and no mistake. And I can’t get Adelia out of my head. I’ve been thinking of her steady ever since that confounded gossip began.”