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that Hans would only plead his cause, nothing more.
    "My feelings haven't changed, Julie, except maybe they are stronger.  I think we should get married very soon, so I can take you to the farm and--"
    "Sssshhh," she whispered, raising a finger to her lips and nodding her head in the direction of the man who knelt by one of the graves, his back to the couple under the trees.  Hans bowed his head with a crimson blush, but Julie had to refrain from letting out a long sigh of relief.  She had already heard quite enough.
    Hans, however, had much more to say.
    "I have thought of this for so long that I do not want any more time to pass.  I have dreamed of us, Julie, of you and me making the farm something to be proud of to pass on to our sons the way my father could not do for me."
    In his enthusiasm, Hans had raised his voice again, despite Julie's repeated cautions, and this last statement carried to the man in the cemetery.  He rose, anger in his movement, and turned to face the people who had disturbed his communion.
    Now Julie blushed.  In the dappled shade and from a distance of perhaps fifteen yards, she could not possibly see his eyes, but she didn't need to see them to remember their eerie green and the way Del Morgan could level them at her.  He stared only for a moment, no more than a handful of long seconds, and then he returned to his contemplation of a grave Julie could see was carefully tended, with a lovely red rose bush blooming riotously beside a small headstone.
    That stare had sufficiently cowed Hans as well.  The burly farmer backed a step or two away from Julie and said nothing. She took advantage of the opportunity to whisper, "I think we should go back.  We've disturbed that gentleman." She ignored the blatant inappropriateness of applying the term to Morgan.  "And Mama may need me."
    She tried to ignore the guilt she felt at using her mother's injury, toward which she held a mounting resentment, as an excuse to escape Hans' attentions, but it was much easier to imagine Del Morgan a gentleman than to clear her conscience.
    Guilty feelings or not, she continued in the same vein.
    "I could not even think of leaving Mama until her arm is healed and she can handle some of the housework."
    "That is only five more weeks.  She said so herself.  Surely you could speak to your papa and at least start to make some plans for the wedding," Hans said in an almost whining tone.
    Julie turned to walk towards home.  She didn't particularly want to go back there, back to waiting on her mother and listening to her father, but neither did she wish to spend any more time with Hans.  Especially not with Del Morgan to watch her with his leering green eyes.
    "I will think about it," she told Hans, feeling her spectacles start to slide again.  "But you must remember that my mother is not well and she needs me to help her.  And I owe my parents much more than I can ever repay.  It would not be right for me to walk out on them suddenly.  I must not be ungrateful or put any more burdens on them."
    As she pushed her glasses back up to the bridge of her nose, Hans mumbled an apology.
    "I have been unfair," he said as they stopped just outside the fence enclosing the Hollstroms' yard.  "But it is six years since I first spoke to your papa about our marrying, and that is a long time to wait for a wife.  Promise me it will not have been in vain."
    Julie remained silent for a dozen heartbeats or more, trying to devise a promise that could be honorably broken. There had never been a formal betrothal all those years ago in Minnesota.  Julie had given Hans no promise then and she had no intention of doing so now.
    "I will abide by my father's wishes," she told him finally.  "I will do what is best for all of us."
    It was a weak vow, one she worried he would easily see through, but Hans seemed happy to accept it.  With a clumsy flourish, he took both her hands in his and clasped them tightly.  A broad grin lit his face,