“Ah, ’tis only the old head talking through the young voice,” laughed Father O’Toole. “It’s to be hoped she won’t be brought into too much trouble. Och, ye’re a fine girl, and a beauty to boot. The pity of it that ye’re not a boy! Then we could make a priest of ye, and the many theological arguments and disquisitions we could have would put a different complexion on these things entirely.”

Ma then brought in tea and the talk became ladylike and small. Our enlivening guest shook my hand kindly at parting as he said, “Ye can count me wan of ye’r friends and admirers though I think ye’re wrong, young woman, but ye must grow to years of discretion.”

Pa thanked him heartily for calling and invited him to come again which he promised to do, “To see what fresh mischief this young lady will be at.”

“There’s a man of the world,” observed Pa, as he went. “I like him for coming openly as a friend, not a snake behind our backs.”

“Huh!” said Ma. “He has the real old cackle like a political vote-catcher with his tongue in his cheek.”

The following day I got a horrifying letter. The signature was bold and plain, so were the contents. It was from old Mr. Grayling who lived ten or fifteen miles away to the east. He was one of the most intimate of our friends. His wife had died about a year since. His daughters were Ma’s great friends. He was seventy-two years of age—twenty-one years older than Pa.

I thought I was having a nightmare. It was a proposal of marriage. It sickened me to the core as something unclean.

Things were pretty bad for me, he said, when a blasted priest could think he had the right to denounce me, but that He (old Grayling) had faith in me. With his love and protection I could reinstate myself and be a very happy woman. He was a frantic Protestant and so set on his chart of the way to heaven that a cross drove him berserk as a symbol of popery rather than as the gallows on which Christ was crucified.

Old Grayling told me his age right out, but said he was younger at heart and otherwise than men half his age. Ugh! I cannot go on. UGH! UGH! UGH!

This was a desecration of all I had ever thought of love, of all the knights that were bold and heroes in lace and gold, and that sort of thing. Old Grayling was the most wrinkled man I know. He was stooped; he had only two or three barnacled fangs, and nothing gives a man such a mangy and impecunious appearance in the flesh as teeth like that. He had a BEARD. A straggly old-man one!

Petrified, sick, I hid behind the pig-sty for an hour or two. I had regarded him as a friendly grandfather. Why, he had three sons all with beards and bald heads and corporations! His granddaughters were older than I by years. It was as shocking as a case of indecent exposure against a bishop.