change his lover-like tone for the surly and tyrannical one befitting his idea of the marital character and privileges.
"It's all waste time and breath for you to say any more about it," announced he at length. "You're agoing over to my house in just about ten minutes, and you may as well go with a good grace. A girl like you can't judge what's best for her; and, while your father and mother are away, me and my mother are the ones to say for you."
"I do not acknowledge the right at all, Mr. Hetherford, replied Molly coldly; "and, although very grateful to your mother and yourself"—
"Hang all that!" roared Hetherford: "I say you're to go, and you're going."
"I deny your right to command, and I shall not obey."
"I should like to know who has a better right to command a woman than her husband, or he who is soon to be her husband."
"You will never be my husband, Reuben Hetherford."
"Oh, pshaw! I've heard girls talk before."
"I never talk without meaning what I say. I have determined, fully determined, to break off my engagement to you, and I now do so. It is a thing altogether settled in my own mind, and your violence just now has only hastened the announcement of my purpose."
"Nonsense, Molly!" interposed Mercy, who read more shrewdly than her brother the signs of determi-
