Page:Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1903).djvu/298

280 that prize when he gave it." The mind of Huldah's mother ran towards the idea that her daughter's rights had been assailed.

"Land, Marthy, what foolishness you talk!" exclaimed Mrs. Perkins; "you don't suppose he could tell what composition the committee was going to choose; and why should he offer another fifty dollars for a boy's prize, if he wan't interested in helpin' along the school? He 's give Emma Jane about the same present as Rebecca every Christmas for five years; that 's the way he does."

"Some time he 'll forget one of 'em and give to the other, or drop 'em both and give to some new girl!" said Delia Weeks, with an experience born of fifty years of spinsterhood.

"Like as not," assented Mrs. Peter Meserve, "though it 's easy to see he ain't the marryin' kind. There 's men that would marry once a year if their wives would die fast enough, and there 's men that seems to want to live alone."

"If Ladd was a Mormon, I guess he could have every woman in North Riverboro that 's a suitable age, accordin' to what my cousins say," remarked Mrs. Perkins.

"'T ain't likely he could be ketched by any North Riverboro girl," demurred Mrs. Robinson; "not when he prob'bly has had the pick o' Boston. I guess Marthy hit it when she said there's men that ain't the marryin' kind."