At the Market

The words of Lyman Mertzheimer lingered with Amanda for many days. He
had seemed so confident, so arrogantly sure, of her ultimate surrender
to his desire to marry her. Soon after the Spelling Bee he returned to
his college and the girl sighed in relief that his presence was not
annoying her. But she reckoned without the efficient United States mail
service. The rejected lover wrote lengthy, friendly letters which she
answered at long intervals by short, impersonal little notes.

"Oh, yea," she said to herself one day, "why does it have to be Lyman
Mertzheimer that falls in love with me? But he might as well fall out
as soon as he can. I'll never marry him. I read somewhere that one girl
said, 'I'd rather love what I cannot have, than have what I cannot
love,' and that's just the way I feel about it. I won't marry Lyman
Mertzheimer if I have to die Amanda Reist!"

As soon as her school term was ended Amanda entered into the work of
the farm. She helped Millie as much as possible in a determined effort
to forget all about the man who wanted her and whom she did not want,
and, more than that, to think less about her knight, her Sir Galahad,
who evidently had no time to waste on girls.

Millie appreciated Amanda's help. "There's one thing sure," she said
proudly to Mrs. Reist, "our Amanda ain't lazy. It seems to abody she's
workin' more'n ever this here spring. I guess mebbe she thinks she
better get all the ins and outs o' housework so as she can do it right
till she gets married once."