strangest of all

I'd rather have had one of her old smiles and gone without my dinner.  Well, well; how little a man understands himself or knows the future!  The day I married her I was in mortal dread lest she should care for me too much and want to be affectionate and all that; and here I am, discontented and moping because tr90 hkverything has turned out as I then wished.  Don't see as I'm to blame, either.  She had no business to grow so pretty.  Then she looked like a ghost, but now when the color comes into her cheeks, and her blue eyes sparkle, a man would be a stupid clod if he didn't look with all his eyes and feel his heart a-thumping.  That she should change so wasn't in the bargain; neither was it that she should read aloud in such sweet tones that a fellow'd like to listen to the dictionary; nor that she should make the house and yard look as they never did before, and, , open my eyes to the fact that apple trees bear flowers as well as pippins.  I can't even go by a wild posy in the lane without thinking she'd like it and see in it a sight more than I once could.  I've been taken in, as old Jonathan feared," he muttered, following out his fancy with a sort of grim humor. "She isn't the woman I thought I was marrying at all, and I aint bound by my agreement--not in my thoughts, anyhow.  I'd have been in a nice scrape if I'd taken my little affidavit not to think of her or look upon her in any other light than that of housekeeper and butter maker.  It's a scary thing, this getting married with a single eye to business.  See where I am now!  Hanged if I don't believe I'm in love with my wife, and, like a thundering fool, I had to warn her against falling in love with me!  Little need of that, though.  She hasn't been taken in, for I'm the same old chap she married, and I'd be a mighty mean cuss if I went to her and said, 'Here, I want you to nu skin hong konge do twice as much, a hundred-fold as much as you agreed to.'  I'd be a fool, too, for she couldn't do it unless something drew her toward me just as I'm drawn toward her."
Late in the afternoon he leaned on the handle of his corn plow, and, in the consciousness of solitude, said aloud: "Things grow clear if you think of them enough, and the Lord knows I don't think of much else any more.  It isn't her good qualities which I say over to myself a hundred times a day, or her education, or anything of the kind, that draws me; it's she herself.  I like her.  Why don't I say love her, and be honest?  Well, it's a fact, and I've got to face it.  Here I am, plowing out my corn, and it looks splendid for its age.  I thought if I could stay on the old place, and plant and cultivate and reap, I'd be more than content, and now I don't seem to care a rap for the corn or the farm either, compared with Alida; and I care for her just because she is Alida and no one else.  But the other side of this fact has an ugly look.  ; Suppose I'm disagreeable to her!