It would be a mésalliance for an Adams to marry a Crane . Still , it would doubtless have happened -- for Mattie , though a meek-looking damsel , had a mind of her own -- had it not been for Selena Ford , Mattie 's older sister . Selena , people said , had married James Ford for no other reason than that his house commanded a view of nearly every dooryard in Amberley . This may or may not have been sheer malice . Certainly nothing that went on in the Adams yard escaped Selena . She watched Mattie and Jed in the moonlight one night . She saw Jed kiss Mattie . It was the first time he had ever done so -- and the last , poor fellow . For Selena swooped down on her parents the next day . Such a storm did she brew up that Mattie was forbidden to speak to Jed again . Selena herself gave Jed a piece of her mind . Jed usually was not afflicted with undue sensitiveness . But he had some slumbering pride at the basis of his character and it was very stubborn when roused . Selena roused it . Jed vowed he would never creep and crawl at the feet of the Adamses , and he went west forthwith , determined , as aforesaid , to make his fortune and hurl Selena 's scorn back in her face . And now he had come home , driving a tin-wagon . Mattie smiled to think of it . She bore Jed no ill will for his failure . She felt sorry for him and inclined to think that fate had used him hardly -- fate and Selena together . Mattie had never had another beau .
People thought she was engaged to Jed Crane until her time for beaus XXXXX by .
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