Part 2 (1/2)
”I didn't know I could look that nice,” she said with a candor at once pathetic and naive. ”I've been wis.h.i.+ng he wouldn't come, but now I kinda hope he will.”
Betty gently propelled her to the porch and established her in one of the rocking chairs with a magazine to give her an air of leisure.
”You'll come and talk to him, won't you?” urged Mrs. Peabody anxiously. ”It's been so long since I've seen a stranger I won't know what to say.”
”Yes, you will,” Betty a.s.sured her ”I'll come out after you've talked a little while. He won't stay long, I imagine, because he will probably have a number of calls to pay.”
”Well, I hope Joseph stays out of sight,” remarked Joseph Peabody's wife frankly. ”Of course, in time the new minister will know him as well as the old one did; but I would like to have him call on me like other paris.h.i.+oners first.”
CHAPTER III
BOB HAS GREAT NEWS
The new minister proved to be a gentle old man, evidently retired to a country charge and, in his way, quite as diffident as Mrs. Peabody.
He was apparently charmed to be entertained on the porch, and saw nothing wrong with the neglected house and grounds. His near-sighted eyes, beaming with kindness and good-will, apparently took comfort and serenity for granted, and when Betty came out half an hour after his arrival, carrying a little tray of lemonade and cakes, he was deep in a recital of the first charge he had held upon his graduation from the theological seminary forty years before.
”There, that's over!” sighed Mrs. Peabody, quite like the experienced hostess, when the minister's shabby black buggy was well on its way out of the lane. ”You're dreadful good, Betty, to help me through with it. He won't come again for another six months--it takes him that long to cover his parish, the farms are so far apart. Let me help you carry back the chairs.”
Betty longed to suggest that they leave them out and use the porch as an outdoor sitting room, but she knew that such an idea would be sure to meet with active opposition from the master of Bramble Farm.
Long before he came in to supper that night the chairs had been restored to their proper places and Mrs. Peabody had resumed the gray wrapper she habitually wore. Only the vase of flowers on the table was left to show that the afternoon had been slightly out of the ordinary. That and the tray of gla.s.ses Betty had unfortunately left on the draining board of the sink, intending to wash them with the supper dishes.
”Whose gla.s.ses, and what's been in 'em?” demanded Mr. Peabody suspiciously. ”There's sugar in the bottom of one of 'em. You haven't been making lemonade?” He turned to his wife accusingly.
Bob had not come home yet, and there was only Ethan, the hired man, Betty, and the Peabodys at the supper table.
”I made lemonade,” said Betty quietly. ”Those are my own gla.s.ses I bought in Glenside, and the sugar and lemons were mine, too. So were the cakes.”
This silenced Peabody, for he knew that Betty's uncle sent her money from time to time, and though he fairly writhed to think that she Could spend it so foolishly, he could not interfere.
As soon as it was dark the Peabody household retired, to save lighting lamps, and this evening was no exception. Betty learned from a stray question Mrs. Peabody put to Ethan, the hired man, that Bob was not expected home until ten or eleven o'clock. There was no thought of sitting up for him, though Betty knew that in all likelihood he would have had no supper, having no money and knowing no one in Trowbridge.
She was not sleepy, and having brushed and braided her hair for the night, she threw her sweater over her dressing gown and sat down at the window of her room, a tin of sardines and a box of crackers in her lap, determined to see to it that Bob had something to eat.
There was a full moon, and the road lay like a white ribbon between the silver fields. Betty could follow the lane road out to where it met the main highway, and now and then the sound of an automobile horn came to her and she saw a car speed by on the main road. Sitting there in the sweet stillness of the summer night, she thought of her mother, of the old friends in Pineville, and, of course, of her uncle. She wondered where he was that night, if he thought of her, and what would be his answer to her letter.
”Is that a horse?” said Betty to herself, breaking off her reverie abruptly. ”Hark! that sounds like a trotting horse.”
She was sure that she could make out the outlines of a horse and rider on the main road, but it was several minutes before she was positive that it had turned into the lane. Yes, it must be Bob. No one else would be out riding at that hour of the night. Betty glanced at her wrist-watch--half-past ten.
The rhythmic beat of the horse's hoofs sounded more plainly, and soon Betty heard the sound of singing. Bob was moved to song in that lovely moonlight, as his sorry mount was urged to unaccustomed spirit and a feeling of freedom.
”When in thy dreaming, moons like these shall s.h.i.+ne again, And, daylight beaming, prove thy dreams are vain.”
Bob's fresh, untrained voice sounded sweet and clear on the night air, and to Betty's surprise, tears came unbidden into her eyes. She was not given to a.n.a.lysis.
”Moonlight always makes me want to cry,” she murmured, das.h.i.+ng the drops from her eyes. ”I hope Bob will look up and know that I'm at the window. I don't dare call to him.”
But Bob, who had stopped singing while still some distance from the house, clattered straight to the barn.