Part 26 (2/2)

The name, with its sudden reminder of the one to whom Tom Saxon had mockingly given it in the summer, made Esther laugh. Morton Elwell, with his brown hands and common suit of clothes, did not look the character in the least.

”Well, I'm glad you are _not_ a nabob,” she said, meeting his eyes, and then demurely dropping her own. ”Please don't go on to be one so fast that we can't keep up with you. There are some of us that like the old ways and have to go slow.”

His face kindled, and he was on the point of saying something, when his aunt spoke. ”Now you children just make yourselves at home,” she said, rising, ”and I'll go on and get the supper. I was just fixing to make some biscuits when you came, Esther. You'll stay to supper, of course.”

”Oh, I must go home in a minute,” said the girl. For the first time in her life she felt a sudden timidity in the thought of a _tete-a-tete_ with Morton Elwell. ”Mother'll expect me.”

”Now what makes you talk like that?” said Mrs. Elwell, in an injured tone. ”Doesn't she know where you are? Of course she won't expect you.

She knows I wouldn't let you go home before supper. Why, you never used to do that way, and it's ever so long since you were here.”

The logic was unanswerable, and Esther settled back in the chair from which she had half risen. ”She'll stay, Aunt Jenny,” said Morton, and he added, smiling at Esther, ”weren't you just saying that some of us liked the old ways?”

She took refuge in them swiftly when they were left alone. He must tell her all about himself, about college, what he had done to gain that scholars.h.i.+p, and what else he had done. She was all sympathy, all interest, with all the old responsiveness in her face, and he yielded himself to the warmth and joy of it as one yields to spring suns.h.i.+ne after the cold. She grew easier after the first, and presently there was no chance for embarra.s.sment nor for confidences left; for the senior Elwell, with Morton's young cousins, came into the room, and then the talk grew general, though with Morton still at the centre, as was the newcomer's right, and indeed his necessity with Esther leading him on.

She was at her best-winsome, adroit, and determined if there was family pride in this uncle of his, it should bestir itself now. She had grown even prettier than she used to be, her manners even more charming, the young man said to himself, and the bounding happiness in her heart might well have made it true. For there had been a moment, just that moment before the others came into the room, when she had caught sure knowledge of the thing she had longed to know.

He had been telling her of an oratorical contest in which he had borne a part, and, with a sudden tenderness in his voice, had said, ”I wished a hundred times, while I was preparing my speech, that I could go over it with you. Do you remember how you always used to let me orate to you when I had anything on hand for the rhetoricals? It must have been an awful bore, but somehow I never felt as if I could go on the stage without your help.”

”And you see you didn't need it after all,” she said, looking away. ”You won the medal without me.”

”Oh, but it wasn't without you,” he said, leaning toward her and speaking low, ”for I was thinking all the time what you would say if I won.”

Ah, he could not have said a word like that if some other girl had stolen her place away!

The talk was over at last, and the supper too, the good substantial supper which was always spread at the Elwells'. She could go now. There was no formality to insist that having eaten she must stay still longer, and she wanted Morton to herself. She was quite ready for it now, and he would go home with her of course.

They had come back, with all the new meaning of it for each, to the old frankness and freedom, and yet as they took the familiar path across the fields, in the gathering dusk, it was not easy to speak the thought that filled both their hearts. They talked for a little while of indifferent things-of the lengthening days, of the buds swelling on the willows, of the new buildings rising on a neighbor's place. Then, all at once the moon, the friendly moon, so kind in all its wanderings to the needs of lovers, rose up in the sky. It was a new moon, and they saw it at the same moment over their right shoulders.

”We must wish a wish, as we used to when we were children,” said Esther, gayly.

There could never be another moment like this. He stood suddenly still, and his eyes looked into hers. ”Esther,” he said, ”it seems to me I have only one wish in the world, it is so much dearer than all the others. If I could know, if I could surely know-” and then he stopped. That swelling at his throat which had choked him once before mastered his voice again, not from fear now, but hope.

She waited an instant, then, as her hand slipped into his, whispered, ”Do you mean me, Mort? Oh, _do_ you mean me?”

It had never taken any one so long to cross that field as it did those two to cross the little s.p.a.ce that was left. There was no bar to speech now, and there was so much to say! He said to her presently, with a note of perplexity in his voice, ”Esther, I have never understood why you gave up going to Boston this winter. You certainly wanted very much to go at first.”

”Things changed after grandfather died,” she said. She hesitated a moment, then took refuge in the formula she had used so often to the others, but with a clause she had not whispered before, as she added, ”Somehow I knew there was nothing I really wanted except to come home-and have _you_ come too.”

He murmured something rapturous. But he was not quite satisfied yet.

After a little he said, ”Esther, do you remember telling me once that if you had half a chance you'd live a different life from the common workaday sort; you'd have culture, and leisure, and travel, and all those things? You did have a chance, didn't you?”

She flushed. ”No one offered it to me,” she said. ”Perhaps no one ever would. At any rate-” her voice sounded nervous but happy-”if 'twas 'half a chance,' I ran away from the other half. I didn't want anything but you, Mort. I shall have whatever you have, and that's enough.”

He threw back his head and drew a long breath. ”Oh, I mean to do so much for you,” he said. ”It seems to me I can accomplish anything now.”

There was the murmur of excited talking in the sitting room at the Northmores' when they opened the door at last. ”Well, of all the strange things she ever did, I call that the strangest,” the doctor was saying in the tone of one grappling with a mystery.

The two young people looked at each other wondering. Then Esther said, in a merry whisper, ”He doesn't mean me. He'll think I've done the most sensible thing in the world.”

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