She said no more until they were in the privacy of her own bedroom.

She placed the trembling visitor in a chair by the window, where occasional bursts of sunlight came through the soft muslin curtains.

Then she drew up another chair and sat close beside her.

"Arabella," she said, "you've heard from him?"

Miss Arabella hung her head like a schoolgirl caught in a naughty prank. "Yes," she whispered guiltily.

Elsie flung her arms about the little wet figure. "Oh, Arabella, dear, I'm so glad! I'm so glad! Now aren't you glad I wouldn't let you give me the dress? Is he coming home?"

"Yes."

"When?"

"Next summer--in June."

"Oh! And is he well? Where does he live? And why didn't--oh, tell me all about it!"

The sympathetic joy was bringing the tears to Miss Arabella's eyes again. "Oh, Elsie, you're so awful good! I--would you--would it look kind o' foolish if I was to let you read his letter?"

"Not a bit, if you don't mind, you know. I'd really love to see it,"

she confessed honestly.

Miss Arabella threw back her shawl and carefully unrolled the blue silk. She took the letter from its folds and then hesitated. "Mebby,"

she began breathlessly, "I--perhaps I'd better read it to you, Elsie--because there's parts, you know, that might sound--foolish."

She looked at the girl apologetically.

"Of course, Arabella, I understand." Elsie pushed the letter back into her hand. "After all, no third person ought to see a love-letter, you know."

Much a.s.sured, and still blushing and stammering, Miss Arabella read aloud a few of the more practical details of the letter. She pa.s.sed tremulously over the tender pa.s.sages, and she also omitted the part about Martin's receiving help from a friend. Somehow, her jealous pride in him forbade that another should know he had not succeeded unaided.

"Poor little Arabella," whispered the girl when it was finished. "And it's coming true at last. And what a nice name he's got--Martin--what's the rest of it?"

"Martin Heaslip," whispered Arabella, as though afraid to utter it.

"Martin Heaslip--I like the sound of it. And he's rich, too. Why, it seems too good to be true."

Miss Arabella glanced up quickly, and a look of apprehension came over her radiant face. "That's just what I can't help thinking, Elsie.

Don't it seem too good to happen to me?"

"Pooh! Nonsense!" laughed the other, with the sure hopefulness of youth. "Of course it'll happen. You must take your dress to Mrs. Long right away, and she and Ella Anne----"

"No! no! _no_!" Miss Arabella sat up straight, her eyes dilated with fear. "No, n.o.body's to know a whisper about it. Not anybody! Mind, Elsie, you promised. Oh, Elsie, you did!"

"Yes, yes, Arabella!" cried the girl, alarmed at the agitation she had aroused. "But who's to make your dress and give you a wedding? They must all know some time."

"No, there's n.o.body to know until it's all over. Once, just after he went West, he wrote and ast me to come out, an' he sent the money, an'--an'--Susan wouldn't let me go! She made me send the money back.

She said I wasn't strong enough to go out and live there, and--she--meant it for kindness, you know, Elsie, but--he--I guess he felt bad." Miss Arabella carefully covered the blue silk from harm, for the tears were dropping again. "Anyhow, it, made him think he'd got to get things fixed up awful grand for me, or else he'd 'a' sent for me long ago. And Susan wouldn't let me go this time--I know she wouldn't. She'd say I was too old for such foolishness. Do you think I look awful old, Elsie?" she asked piteously.

"Oh, Arabella, dear! No! no! You look young and as pretty as a picture!" she exclaimed, truthfully. "But, Arabella"--her brow puckered worriedly--"if no one knows, how are you going to do it?"

"I'm going to write and tell him to come for me, and never let on to any one, an' we'll--we'll--what do you call it when they run away?"

"Not elope, Arabella!" cried Elsie in dismay.

"Yes, that's it. We'll elope," said Miss Arabella calmly.

The girl looked at her, and for an instant the vision of the shy, drooping little woman figuring in a runaway match filled her with a desire for laughter. But it was quenched the next instant by the gravity of the situation. What did Elsie know of this man, after all?

What if the innocent little child-woman were being deceived! That feeling she often experienced, of being far older than Arabella, took possession of her.

"Arabella," she said gravely, but gently, "are you quite, quite sure that he is kind, and--and--good, and all you could wish him to be?"

Miss Arabella looked at her in childlike wonder, and then her face lit up with a heavy smile. "Oh, my! there's no fear of him!" she cried radiantly.

Elsie was silent. She dared not disturb her beautiful faith. "But, Arabella," she pleaded, "even if you told Susan and Bella and all, when he came they would have to let you marry him. And I think it would be better, much better, than to elope. It looks as though you were doing something wrong--and you're not."

Miss Arabella's head drooped again. She nervously fingered a corner of the blue silk. "It ain't exactly that," she said shyly, "but I kind of feel scared about it, Elsie." Her voice sank to a whisper. "You see, I've got so used to bein' disappointed that I guess I can't stand anything else for a while," she added, with unconscious pathos. "And I ain't dead sure that it'll happen, you know. It seems as if it was too good to be true, and if it didn't"--her face looked suddenly old and gray--"Susan and William and Ella Anne, an' all the folks, would talk and _talk_." She shivered. "I can't stand to be talked about, Elsie.

It was just because I was so scared o' bein' talked about that I got better last fall. And, oh, I want you to make Ella Anne keep still about my letter, won't you, Elsie, please? And you'll not tell, will you?"

"No, Arabella, not a soul." She sighed in perplexity. To a.s.sist in an elopement! The staid, earnest upbringing of the country girl, coupled with her high sense of duty, made her shrink from the very word.

"And the dress, Arabella? Shall I help you make it?"

"That's what I was jist thinkin' about. I can't have it made at home, 'cause Susan an' Bella's in an' out every day. An' you can't have it here, for Jean an' the boys'll be home soon, an' they'd find out, an'

if Lorry Sawyer was to get a sight of it, she'd remember all she's forgot. I was thinkin' on the way ever there's jist one woman in the village would make it an' never tell a soul, an' that's----"

Elsie nodded. "Mrs. Munn."

"Yes. Harriet dressmaked for a long time before Munn died; he wasn't no more use than Davy. An' she'd make it an' never tell. An' you'd help a little, wouldn't you, an' see that she made it--kind o'--jist a little--fashionable, Elsie?"

"Yes, Arabella; oh, yes." The answer was absently given. The girl's eyes were troubled. But Miss Arabella gazed at her in perfect faith, feeling sure she was evolving some new style for the fashioning of the blue silk gown.

"Elsie, my girl!" Old lady Cameron's soft voice, with its Highland Scotch accent, came from the foot of the stairs. "The minister's jist driving across the bridge. Come away down, and bring Arabella with you."

Elsie went into the preparations for Arabella's elopement with something of the feeling that she was a.s.sisting in a bank robbery. She suffered from a very anxious conscience the day she took the blue silk to Mrs. Munn. No need to tell that silent lady that the affair must be kept a secret; Mrs. Munn guarded everything that came her way as if it were a deadly crime in which she was implicated. She seemed not a whit disturbed by the astonishing fact that Arabella was going to elope.

Such a method of getting married quite coincided with her general belief that things should not be talked about. She asked no questions concerning the prospective bridegroom, but promised to make the wedding gown entirely on faith, and if Granny Long found out she was making anything--well, she'd have to get a spy-gla.s.s as long as the sawmill smokestack!

Elsie had expected some advice and help from the elder woman, and felt disappointed and worried. The burden of the secret was beginning to weigh on her. Suppose she was helping Arabella to take a step that would end in life-long unhappiness!

She went slowly homeward, and sat down alone in her little room, sorely perplexed. She was gazing with troubled eyes down the lane, when a light came into them, and a little flush mounted to her cheek. A smart horse and buggy had turned in at the gate, and was pa.s.sing below her window. The next moment Archie came up the stairs with a message. Dr.

Allen wanted to know if she would like a drive.

She came down the steps clad in a long, brown coat, and a little toque with a coquettish bronze wing on it, the color of her hair. Dr. Allen looked at her approvingly. He had no smallest notion of the details of a woman's dress, but he knew that this one always seemed a wonderful harmony of color.

They sped down the lane and out upon the open, smooth highway. The roads were almost dry now, and in the dun-colored fields and the purple-gray woods there was an air of expectancy, as though the earth knew that a great change was near. It was a glorious, bl.u.s.tering spring day. The wind was working strenuously to keep the sky clear of clouds, and a time of it she was having. A hard-working, tidy body she was, this April afternoon, but she did not go about her work systematically. For no sooner had she swept her great floor a clear, gleaming blue, than, with a careless flourish of her broom, she scattered great rolling heaps of down all over it, and had to go frantically to work and brush them together again. Nevertheless, the wind and the clouds, and indeed the whole world, seemed to be having a grand time. The trees swung giddily before the gale, the bare, brown fields were smiling and tidy, and as clean as a floor, and the little streams by the roadside leaped and laughed at the sunlight. Only the birds seemed to be in trouble. A gasping robin clung for a moment to an unsteady perch in a lashing elm, and tried his poor little best to get out a few notes. But the frolicsome wind slapped him in the face, and choked him, and he fled before it to the shelter of the woods.

Everywhere was tremendous rush and bustle and glad hurry, for was not all the world preparing for the arrival of Summer? She might come any day now, and the earth must be tidied and swept and washed and dried, to make ready for the glorious paraphernalia of green carpets and curtains, and flower cushions, and endless bric-a-brac, that grand lady was sure to bring.

Even Gilbert felt the joy of the spring day, and behaved quite cheerfully for a young man who had had his heart broken only the winter before. The two had not driven together since the day they had witnessed Sandy McQuarry's Waterloo, and they recalled it with laughter, and discussed, with even more merriment, the wonderful sequel. For since Sandy had fulfilled his wager, and come back to Elmbrook church, and had apparently decided to go softly all the rest of his days, the gossips had noticed patent signs of a strong inclination on his part to go even deeper in his humility, and make a life treaty with his conqueror, and Elmbrook was all agog over the unbelievable prospect. Since that last drive Elsie Cameron had dropped some of her reserve, and Gilbert felt they were on a friendly footing.

He was not so afraid of her now, since he had done his duty, and he found her a most pleasant comrade. They talked of many things, grave and gay. They exchanged reminiscences of schooldays, for they were both Canadian born and country bred, and had a wholesome, happy past to recall. In the talk of his boyhood days Gilbert was led to tell of his early ambitions, and of the struggle he had had to get an education.