Part 10 (1/2)

And so the evening pa.s.sed with the banter that invariably took place when Rube was of the party. It was late when they left the Squire's, the constable going along with them, and all singing merrily as birds on a summer morning.

David went out under the stars and smoked innumerable pipes, but they did not give their customary solace to-night. There was an upheaval going on in his well regulated mind. ”Who was she? What was the mystery about her? How did a girl like that come to be tramping about the country looking for work?” Her manner of speaking, the very intonations of her voice, her choice of words, all proclaimed her from a different world from theirs. He had noticed her hands, white and fragile, and her small delicate wrists. They did not belong to a working woman.

And her eyes, that seemed to hold the sorrows of centuries in their liquid depths. What was the mystery of it all? And that insolent city chap! What a look he had given her. The memory of it made Dave's hands come together as if he were strangling something. But it was all too deep for him. The lights glimmered in the rooms upstairs. His father walked to the outer gate to say good-night to Mr. Sanderson--and he tried to justify the feeling of hatred he felt toward Sanderson, but could not. The sound of a shutter being drawn in, caused him to look up. Anna, leaned out in the moonlight for a moment before drawing in the blind. Dave took off his hat--it was an unconscious act of reverence. The next moment, the grave, shy countryman had smiled at his sentimentality. The shutters closed and all was dark, but Dave continued to think and smoke far into the night.

The days slipped by in pleasant and even tenor. The summer burned itself out in a riot of glorious colors, the harvest was gathered in, and the ripe apples fell from the trees--and there was a wail of coming winter to the night wind. Anna Moore had made her place in the Bartlett family. The Squire could not imagine how he ever got along without her; she always thought of everyone's comfort and remembered their little individual likes and dislikes, till the whole household grew to depend on her.

But she never spoke of herself nor referred to her family, friends or manner of living, before coming to the Bartlett farm.

When she had first come among them, her beauty had caused a little ripple of excitement among the neighbors; the young men, in particular, were all anxious to take her to husking bees and quilting parties, but she always had some excellent excuse for not going, and while her refusals were offered with the utmost kindness, there was a quiet dignity about the girl that made any attempt at rustic playfulness or familiarity impossible.

Sanderson came to the house from time to time, but Anna treated him precisely as she would have treated any other young man who came to the Squire's. She was the family ”help,” her duty stopped in announcing the guests--or sometimes, and then she felt that fate had been particularly cruel--in waiting on him at table.

Once or twice when Sanderson had found her alone, he had attempted to speak to her. But she silenced him with a look that seat him away cowering like a whipped cur. If he had any interest in any member of the Squire's family, Anna did not notice it. He was an ugly scar on her memory, and when not actually in his presence she tried to forget that he lived.

CHAPTER XII.

KATE BREWSTER HOLDS SANDERSON'S ATTENTION.

”A stony adversary, an inhuman wretch Incapable of pity, void and empty From any dram of mercy.”--_Shakespeare_.

It was perhaps owing to the fact that Anna strove hourly to eliminate the memory of Lennox Sanderson from her life, that she remained wholly unaware of that which every member of the Squire's household was beginning to notice: namely, that Lennox Sanderson was becoming daily more attentive to Kate Brewster.

She had more than once hazarded a guess on why a man of Sanderson's tastes should care to remain in so quiet a neighborhood, but could arrive at no solution of the case. In discussing him, she had heard the Bartletts quote his reason, that he was studying practical farming, and later on intended to take it up, on a large scale. When she had first seen him at the Squire's, she had made up her mind that it would be better for her to go away, but the memory of the homeless wanderings she had endured after her mother's death, filled her with terror, and after the first shock of seeing Sanderson, she concluded that it was better to remain where she was, unless he should attempt to force his society on her, in which case she would have to go, if she died by the wayside.

Dave was coming across the fields late one autumn afternoon when he saw Anna at the well, trying with all her small strength to draw up a bucket of water. The well--one of the old-fas.h.i.+oned kind that worked by a ”sweep” and pole, at the end of which hung ”the old oaken bucket”

which Anna drew up easily till the last few feet and then found it was hard work. She had both hands on the iron bale of the bucket and was panting a little, when a deep, gentle voice said in her ear: ”Let go, little woman, that's too heavy for you.” And she felt the bucket taken forcibly out of her hand.

”Never mind me, Mr. David,” she said, giving way reluctantly.

”Always at some hard work or other,” he said; ”you won't quit till you get laid up sick.”

He filled the water-pail from the bucket for her, which she took up and was about to go when he found courage to say:

”Won't you stay a minute, Anna, I want to talk to you.

”Anna, have you any relatives?”

”Not now.”

”But have you no friends who knew you and loved you before you came to us?”

”I want nothing of my friends, Mr. David, but their good will.”

”Anna, why will you persist in cutting yourself off from the rest of the world like this? You are too good, too womanly a girl, to lead this colorless kind of an existence forever.”

She looked at him pleadingly out of her beautiful eyes. ”Mr. David, you would not be intentionally cruel to me, I know, so don't speak to me of these things. It only distresses _me_--and can do you no good.”

”Forgive me, Anna, I would not hurt you for the world--but you must know that I love you. Don't you think you could ever grow to care for me?”