After a week of hearing this repeated, the large family of Beulah Land and its neighbors began to believe at last that the Pennington ladies were going to leave them. A sweet, romantic sadness then seemed to come over them all. Selma escorted Sarah to all her private places to say goodbye. The blackberry patch was full of ripe fruit, which they ate as they wept and declared they should never, never forget this time they had spent together.

Rooster and Trudy came over for what was expected to be a last supper. Trudy was getting larger every time they saw her. When Sarah left her room, Leon was like her shadow, indoors and out. He was in love, and he fancied himself even more in love than he was. He remembered (Floyd had mentioned her, and Leon had said, “Good Lord, is she still up and about?”) that Sarah had not yet met old Maggie, so one day he took Maggie a present of a pint of liquor and Sarah. The old woman, who had ever loved a drama and initiated not a few, and who had felt snubbed because the guests had paid her no visit, was instantly won to the young girl when she saw her, saw the pretty face and soft eyes and smiling lips and understood why the reports that had come to her had all been so alike and so good. She said she would tell her fortune, and she took a long straw from a sage broom and stirred the cold ashes in the fireplace, where she had cooked earlier in the day.

“You will travel,” she said frowning, “but you will return.” She dropped the straw, rose from her chair, which rocked and creaked by itself without her weight to steady it. She raised her hands, the fingers spread apart for emphasis, and said as if she were repeating words she had received in confidence from Heaven: “Who comes to us in love, let her abide here. Praise be the Lord!”

As they walked thoughtfully back to the house, Leon stopped and took Sarah’s hand. “Don’t go, Sarah. Be my wife. Marry me. I and Beulah Land need you!”

Leon was late in his proposal, and Sarah accepted it quietly. The very moment Leon drove the carriage from the main road into the private drive through the orchard, when Floyd met them and galloped then ahead, calling, “Company coming!”—she had decided, she knew now, that she must one day be mistress of Beulah Land.

21

Oh, there was rejoicing!