"Well, of all the proposals!"

"There's nothing to beat around the bush about. I'm only
thirty-four, a hard worker, with a tidy sum to boot--not that I'm
boasting about it."

"But, Martin, what makes you think I could make you happy?"

Martin felt embarrassed. He was not looking for happiness but
merely for more of the physical comforts, and an escape from
loneliness. He was practical; he fancied he knew about what could
be expected from marriage, just as he knew exactly how many
steers and hogs his farm could support. This was a new
idea--happiness. It had never entered into his calculations. Life
as he knew it was hard. There was no happiness in those fields
when burned by the hot August winds, the soil breaking into cakes
that left crevices which seemed to groan for water. That sky with
its clouds that gave no rain was a hard sky. The people he knew
were sometimes contented, but he could not remember ever having
known any to whom the word "happy" could be applied. His father
and mother --they had been a good husband and wife. But happy?
They had been far too absorbed in the bitter struggle for a
livelihood to have time to think of happiness. This had been
equally true of the elder Malls, was true today of Nellie and her
husband. A man and a woman needed each other's help, could make a
more successful fight, go farther together than either could
alone. To Martin that was the whole matter in a nutshell, and
Rose's gentle question threw him into momentary confusion.