"Ah, Vesta Kirtland, you did love him! Oh, I promise."

"If you did not, there 's such a feeling toward him, different from the others, I can't tell; if you did not, and I should ever know, it would be like I had some little child of my own--yes, like I had some poor little baby of my own, crying for me, and I did not come--I did not come!"

Vesty turned. The tide had run so high those wild ocean guards were covered by the surge.

She led the way to the outskirts of the wood and stood aside for Mrs.

Garrison to pa.s.s. The woman would have drawn near her; she waved her hand, standing aside from her. Mrs. Garrison hesitated. The sight of Dan Kirtland's low, brown cottage, the squalid babies in the doorway, the fishing-nets, Vesty's last week's cotton gown swinging on the line, some humiliating, harsh memories of her own, spurred her on, with a sigh.

"She is fire, thank G.o.d! It will be all right," she said.

Vesty drew back into the woods.

She pressed her forehead hard against the rough bark of a tree. To "fall down there, and to be found and taken home and put away beside her own mother in the little home lot by the sea-wall--not to have to stand up wearily any more, and walk back, dazed and sick, into the light"--so she yearned--"what was there to stand up for?"

A pitiful little wail, and "Lowizy's" weary voice trying to sing reached her.

Clouds drifted over the sky. The poplars shivered; no voice of the thrush now chanting from the wood-depths; but the poplars, that Christ's cross was made from, what soft voice is this of theirs falling? "Love, love, love"--this too? sighing with strange rapture.

Vesty pulled her thick hair down over the bruised place on her forehead. She went out of the woods, toward her father's poor house and the wailing and the feeble singing.

"Vesty! Vesty!" one of the school-children came running toward her.

"Lowizy said you was up here. I came to look for you. Here 's a note Jane Pray sent."

DEAR VESTY: You told me last meetun you was comern up to sett with me and my border some evening. Come tonyte. hees a poor erflickted creetur, seems to me. hees lamer 'an ever an smaller 'an ever this week, an' the burth-scalds on his face shows more, seems to me. Ef that he was payin' 3 dollars a week, I should feel easier, bring your soing an' sett a good long spale.

yours truly, JANE PRAY.

Vesty came, just as the firelight grew welcome and tender. She put aside her hat and shawl, unrolled her parcel of sewing-work, and sat down by the little lamp at one end of the room with Miss Pray.

She took in my presence naturally, with no obtrusive kindness; she was at a necessitous task--putting a broad gray patch, the best available from the resources at home, on Jimmy Kirtland's brown jacket, doing it deftly with her supple hands.

"You'll be doing that for some boys of your own by and by," said Miss Pray, intending to have a cheerful evening.

Vesty grew sweet and pale; she shook her head. Her dark eye-sockets had a look, I thought, as though she had been ill and fasting. I mused in the firelight.

"And what if that should not be your fate indeed, Vesta Kirtland: not bearing, and toil, and pain, and all the heart-breaking vicissitudes of woman's life, but some peculiar station?

"So tall and gracious, to go robed costly, to ride splendidly accoutred and attended, to condescend almost to _all_, to give gracious _downward_ smiles.

"What if they knew the power of wealth and alien rank, for that matter, I held in that miserable, lean, little paw of mine! You should outshine Grace Langham as the sun, Vesty. Some time, if she were wronged and sorrowful, could I point her, delicately, with all forbearance and worship of my own, that way?"

"Be you rebellious?" Unsuccessful in her cheerful attempts with Vesty, Jane Pray had turned to me.

But Vesty resented her companion's question, almost involuntarily turning to me with a quick and awful pity.

(No; I had been lost, dreaming: not that way, surely; not though her heart were moved with the purest pity angels could bestow; not thou, Vesty, above all, sweet one, beautiful one! to a union so unfit and repelling.)

But I had to bring my thoughts back from a long way to answer Miss Fray's question.

"No," I said. "I settled that with G.o.d long ago. It is all right between us."

Miss Pray, confused by Vesty's look, blushed painfully.

"Thank you for asking me about it," I said gently.

At that Miss Pray rose. "Come; le's play words," she said.

So the girl and the woman folded their sewing, and Miss Pray brought from some hitherto unknown recreative source a little box of cardboard letters, and we sat at the table together.

Miss Pray and Vesty thoughtfully selected some letters and shook them together and handed them each to me to make into words. I gave them each a word.

The letters I gave Miss Pray composed a simple and striking feature of the Basin vocabulary, "w-h-a-l-e."

Those I gave Vesty I studied to make a little more difficult, "c-o-n-t-i-n-u-e."

Miss Pray gave me three letters. It happened as I dropped them on the table that they fell of themselves into complete literary sequence, "c-o-w." But Vesty handed me eleven shuffled letters, a ladylike aspiration, and looked at me with a little appealing blush--the Basin school is so brief, so limited in its curriculum.

Miss Pray put on her gla.s.ses and studied wearily and long on her letters, placing them every way. I saw that she had them now at last, "w-h-a-l-e," but was regarding them as blankly as ever.

"Pray do not move them again," I cried hopefully, finding the game more exciting than I had antic.i.p.ated. "You have it, 'w-h-a-l-e,'

whale--see?"

Miss Pray looked shocked and dubious. I saw at once that she was suffering under the sorrowful mental conviction that I had spelled the word wrongly: but that she was resolved not again to wound my feelings.

She turned to a.s.sist Vesty.

"That," she said at length, struck by some suggestive combination, "might be 'continnu,' Vesty, ef it had more 'n's and no 'e'."

"Oh," said Vesty, pleased and enlightened. "But major knows," she added promptly, "about the spelling."

"I have your word, you see, Vesty," I said. "'S-e-p-p-e-r-a-t-i-o-n.'"

I had it spread out proudly on the table. She looked at me and blushed again. I smiled, only as I would at a priceless child.

"You _are_ cute at _guessin'_, major," said Miss Pray admiringly; but I saw that she held me deficient in the cla.s.sical prearrangement of words, and that the game had lost interest to her on that account. So we laid it by.

When Vesty rose to go home, "I will go with you," I said, wrapping my sad little presence in an overcoat.

Miss Pray looked as she had when she asked me if I was rebellious.

But Vesty said quickly: "I wish you would. I am so afraid in the dark!"

Afraid in the dark! Not she; but this was some ointment for that unconscious thrust Miss Pray had given.

I walked home with her. Coming back, there was ever a slight crackling in the bushes and stealthy breathing behind me. It was the lad, Jimmy Kirtland, sent by Vesty surrept.i.tiously to see that I arrived safely at Miss Pray's.

I regarded sacredly this innocent device, but, arrived in the house, I heard Jimmy outside pleading cautiously to Miss Pray through the window that he was afraid to go back alone.