"To end, dandy boy ?" she repeated lazily.

"You didn't think of marrying me--did you ?" He blushed, stammered, and said "Yes," albeit with all his past vacillation and his present distrust of her, transparent on his cheek and audible in his voice.
"No, dear," she said quietly, reaching down, untying her little shoe and shaking the dust and pine needles from its recesses, "no! I don't know enough to be a wife to you, just now, and you know it.

And I couldn't keep a house fit for you, and you couldn't afford to keep ME without it.
And then it would be all known, and it wouldn't be us two, dear, and our lonely meetings any more.

And we couldn't be engaged--that would be too much like me and Seth over again.

That's what you mean, dandy boy--for you're only a dandy boy, you know, and they don't get married to backwood Southern girls who haven't a nigger to bless themselves with since the war! No," she continued, lifting her proud little head so promptly after Ford had recovered from his surprise as to make the ruse of emptying her shoe perfectly palpable, "no, that's what we've both allowed, dear, all along.