Mr. Weeks, on his return home, dropped all diplomacy in dealing with the
question at issue. "Cynthy," he said in his own vernacular, "the end has come,
so far as me and my folks are concerned--I never expect to visit you, and
while I'm master of the house, no more visits will be received. But I haint
taken any such stand onconsiderately," he concluded. "I've given up the whole
forenoon to secure you a better chance of living than visiting around. If you
go to Holcroft's you'll have to do some work, and so will your girl. But
he'll hire someone to help you, and so you won't have to hurt yourself. Your
trump card will be to hook him and marry him before he finds you out. To do
this, you'll have to see to the house and dairy, and bestir yourself for a
time at least. He's pretty desperate off for lack of women folks to look
after indoor matters, but he'll sell out and clear out before he'll keep a
woman, much less marry her, if she does nothing but talk. Now remember,
you've got a chance which you won't get again, for Holcroft not only owns his
farm, but has a snug sum in the bank. So you had better get your things
together, and go right over while he's in the mood."

When Mrs. Mumpson reached the blank wall of the inevitable, she yielded, and
not before. She saw that the Weeks mine was worked out completely, and she
knew that this exhaustion was about equally true of all similar mines, which
had been bored until they would yield no further returns.

But Mr. Weeks soon found that he could not carry out his summary measures.
The widow was bent on negotiations and binding agreements. In a stiff,
cramped hand, she wrote to Holcroft in regard to the amount of "salary" he
would be willing to pay, intimating that one burdened with such
responsibilities as she was expected to assume "ort to be compensiated
proposhundly."

Weeks groaned as he dispatched his son on horseback with this first epistle,