Page:Saxe Holm's Stories, Series Two.djvu/337

Rh of a sudden so," said sensible Joe, "She haint been a longing and a longing for somebody 's I have."

So at the end of the week he went away,—merely saying to Tilly and Mrs. Bennet as he bade them good-by, that he would write very soon. But Tilly's heart had not been so idle as Joe thought, and she was not surprised one day, a few weeks later, when she read in a letter of Joe's that he did n't know whether she knew it or not, but he had come to the conclusion that she was just about the nicest girl in all the country, and if she thought she could take up with a fellow that had n't but one arm, he was hers to command for the rest of her life.

Tilly had a happy little cry over the letter before she showed it to her mother.

"Do you think you can like him, Tilly?" asked Mrs. Bennet, anxiously.

"Yes," said Tilly, "I do like him; and he 's real good."

And when they told Captain 'Lisha, he said, vehemently, that nothing short of going to sea again could have pleased him so much.

So it was settled that at Christmas Joe should come back for Tilly.

When the engagement became known in town, there was great wonderment about it. How did the acquaintance begin? What brought the New Yorker to Provincetown?