"Why ain't you at Poole's Woods?" The fire was dying down a little, but one persistent flame moved like a snake in the dry stubble, and he savagely stamped it out. "Why ain't you? I come after you."

"You didn't wait, did you?"

"Old Mis' Drake said you were goin' with Briggs."

"Did I tell you so?"

He weakened a little.

"N-no! But she said you'd been down talkin' it over an' Oliver'd gone to ketch the colt. She offered me the spy-gla.s.s."

Isabel's lips had a little line of white about them. She looked full at him now.

"Did you take it, Jim?"

"Take it? No!" he roared at her. "Do you think I'd do a thing like that?"

They stood looking at each other, glance holding glance, their eyes blazing. Suddenly he threw the rake as if he had been throwing down a shield and held out his arms to her. Isabel walked into them, and while they kissed, her father's straw hat slipped back over her shoulders, and she laughed and never missed the fluffy headgear lying in her room upstairs, waiting for Poole's Woods. Suddenly she remembered that they were out in the broad sunlight, in sight of the road, and then she bethought her that all the town had gone to Poole's Woods to leave them the world alone to kiss in. She remembered, too, that old Mrs. Drake's spy-gla.s.s might be trained on them at that moment.

"I don't care," she said, and laughed.

"Don't care for what?" asked her lover, his lips at her ear.

"For anything. There! let me go. Here's some more fire in the gra.s.s."

They stamped and raked quite soberly for a moment, and then Isabel began to laugh again. She looked wild and beautiful in her fight with the earth and her own heart. Jim laughed a little, too.

"What is it, Bell?" he asked.

"I don't know," she said, in the ecstasy of happiness. "I guess I like a burnfire."

When it died still lower, they walked toward the house, hand in hand, and sat there on the steps watching it.

"Well," said Bryant, smiling at her, "you want to go to Poole's Woods?"

Isabel smiled back.

"I guess so," she said. "We can be there by luncheon-time."

"All right. I'll go home an' harness up." Half-way down the path he stopped and turned. "Say, Isabel!"

She answered from the porch on her way in to don the muslin dress.

"What is it?"

"You never told me what you were down there for."

"Where?"

"Down to Oliver's."

She shook her head and laughed.

"No, nor I sha'n't, either." His brows were coming together. "'Twas an errand," she called to him. "It wa'n't mine, either. You got to know?"

Again they stood looking at each other, this time with a steady challenge as if more things were decided than the moment's victory. Then suddenly, as if in the same breath, they smiled again, and Bryant gave her a little nod.

"Get your things on," he called. "We're goin' to Poole's Woods. That's all I want to know."

THE MASQUERADE

The summer boarders had gone, and Marshmead was settling down to a peace enhanced by affluence. Though the exodus had come earlier than usual this year, because the Hiltons were sailing for Germany and the Dennys due at the Catskills, not one among their country entertainers had complained. Marshmead approved, from a careless dignity, when people brought money into the town, but it always relapsed into its own customs with a contented sigh after the jolt of inexplicable requirements and imported ways. This year had been an especially fruitful one. The boarders had given a fancy dress party with amateur vaudeville combined, for the benefit of the old church, and Martha Waterman now, as she toiled up the hill to a meeting of the Circle, held the resultant check in one of her plump freckled hands. Martha was chief mover in all capable deeds, a warm, silent woman who called children "lamb," plied them with pears, and knew the inner secrets of rich cookery. She was portly, and her thin skin gave confirmation to her own frequent complaint of feeling the heat; but though the day had been more sultry than it was, she would not have foregone the pleasure of endowing the Circle with its new accession toward the meeting-house fund.

The Circle had been founded in war time when women sc.r.a.ped lint and sewed with a pa.s.sionate zeal. Martha was a little girl then, wondering what the excitement was really about, though, since it had lasted through her own brief period, she took it that war was a permanent condition, like bread or weather. Now she often mused over those old days and thought how marvelous it was that she could ever have been young enough to see no significance in that time of blood and pain. In these middle years of hers the Circle was a different affair, but it kept its loyal being. To-day it met in the bas.e.m.e.nt of the church, and there, when Martha went plodding in, nearly all the other members were a.s.sembled. Sometimes they sewed for sufferers from varying disasters, but to-day their hands were idle, and a buzz of talk saluted her. They looked up as one woman when she entered.

"There she is," called two or three, and Lydia Vesey, the little dressmaker, as sharp and unexpected as the slash of her own too-impulsive scissors, came forward with a run.

"You got it?" she inquired.

Mrs. Waterman laughed richly, and set her umbrella in the corner. Then, still holding one hand closed upon the check, she untied her hat and fanned herself with it during the relief of sinking into a seat.

"Do let me get my breath," she besought, yet as if she prolonged the moment for the sake of the dramatic weight the tale demanded. "Seems if I never experienced such a day as this. It's hotter'n any fall I ever see."

"You look very warm, Martha," said Ellen Bayliss, in her gentle way. She was sitting by the window, bending over an embroidered square, the sun on her soft curls and delicate cheek unveiling the look of middle life, yet doing something kindly, too; for though he showed the withered texture of her skin, he brought out the last fleck of gold in her hair, and balanced sadness with some bloom. Ellen had been accounted a beauty, and her niece Nellie was a beauty now, of a more radiant type. She was the rose of life, but aunt Ellen had the fragrance of roses in a jar.

"You sewin', Ellen?" Martha inquired, as if she were willing to shift the topic from what would exact continued speech from her, and at least defer her colleagues' satisfaction. "You're the only one that's brought their thimble, I'll be bound."

"It's only this same centrepiece," Ellen answered, holding it up. "Mrs.

Hilton told me if I'd send it after her, she'd give me three dollars for it. I thought I could turn the money into the fund."

"You got it?" Lydia Vesey cried again, as if she could not possibly crowd her interest under, and this time she had reenforcements from without. Mrs. Daniel Pray, who was almost a giantess and bent laboriously over to accommodate her height to her husband's, took off her gla.s.ses and laid them on her declivitous lap, the better to fix Martha with her dull, small eyes.

"I'll be whipped if I believe you've got it, after all," she offered discontentedly. "Mebbe they're goin' to send by mail."

Martha looked at her a moment, apparently in polite consideration, but really wondering, as she often did, if anything would thicken the hair at Mrs. Pray's parting. She frequently, out of the strength of her address and capability, had these moments of musing over what could be done.

"Speak up, Marthy, can't ye?" ended Mrs. Pray irritably, now putting on her gla.s.ses again as if, having tried one way, she would essay another.

"Didn't you see Mis' Hilton at the last, or didn't they give it to you?"

Martha unclosed her hand and extended it to them impartially, the check, face uppermost, held between thumb and finger. They bent forward to peer. Some rose and looked over the shoulders of the nearer ones, and gla.s.ses were sought and hastily mounted upon noses.

"Well, there," said Mrs. Hanscom, the wife of the grain-dealer who always stipulated for cash payment before he would deliver a bag at the barn door, "it ain't bills, as I see."

"It's just as good." Ellen Bayliss looked up from her sewing to throw this in, with her air of deprecating courtesy. "A check's the same as money any day. I have two, twice a year, from my stock. All you have to do is to write your name on the back and turn 'em into the bank."