A shake of the head was my only answer. I wanted to tell her that Tim
was blind. I wanted to tell her the boy was a fool; that Edith, the
tall, thin, pale creature, was not to be compared to one woman in our
valley; that I know who that woman was; that I loved her. I would have
told her this. With a sudden impulse I leaned toward her. As suddenly
I fell back. My crutches had clattered to the floor!
A battered veteran! A pensioner! A back-woods pedagogue! That I was.
That I must be to the end. My place was in the school-house. My place
was on the store bench, set away there with a lot of other broken
antiquities. That I should ask a woman to link her life with mine, was
absurd. A fair ship on a fair sea soon parts company with a
derelict--unless it tows it. A score of times I had fought this out,
and as often I had found but one course and had set myself to follow
it, but there was that in Mary's quiet eyes that shook my resolution.
There was an appeal there, and trust.
"I am glad, anyway, I am not so much above you, Mark," she said, now
laughing.
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