Diantha's cheeks were not rosy now, and her hair was more
silver than gold, but she was not yet his wife.
And he had tried so hard to win her! Year after year the rosiest apples
from his orchard and the choicest honey from his apiary had found their
way to Diantha's table; and year after year the county fair and the
village picnic had found him at Diantha's door with his old mare and his
buggy, ready to be her devoted slave for the day. Nor was Diantha
unmindful of all these attentions. She ate the apples and the honey, and
spent long contented hours in the buggy; but she still answered his
pleadings with her gentle: "I hain't no call to marry yet, Phineas," and
nothing he could do seemed to hasten her decision in the least. It was
the mare and the buggy, however, that proved to be responsible for what
was the beginning of the end.
They were on their way home from the county fair. The mare, head
hanging, was plodding through the dust when around the curve of the road
ahead shot the one automobile that the town boasted. The next moment the
whizzing thing had passed, and left a superannuated old mare looming
through a cloud of dust and dancing on two wabbly hind legs.
"Plague take them autymobiles!" snarled Phineas through set teeth, as he
sawed at the reins.
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