I had my share of vanity, like other young women, and I began to think of Mrs.Knifton's jokes with some attention.

To be brief, the young farmer managed one Sunday--I never could tell how--to lose his way with me in returning from church, and before we found out the right road home again he had asked me to be his wife.
His relations did all they could to keep us asunder and break off the match, thinking a poor stonemason's daughter no fit wife for a prosperous yeoman.

But the farmer was too obstinate for them.

He had one form of answer to all their objections.

"A man, if he is worth the name, marries according to his own notions, and to please himself," he used to say.