When Elizabeth arrived, the old couple bustled about the bright carpeted room, making it comfortable, and cooing over the return of their prodigal, till a heaven of homeness was made of her advent.

Half an hour later Elizabeth, dry and warm and with a cup of tea beside her which she had found it easier to accept than to refuse, looked about her and invoiced the changes of four years which in her preoccupied state of mind during her former visit she had neglected to think upon. There were many little changes in the household arrangement, due to the observations of the winter spent in Topeka. In personal appearance Aunt Susan herself showed improvement.

When Elizabeth's attention was turned to Nathan, however, the glad little enumeration became a more sober one. In the days when they had fed the motherless Patsie together Nathan Hornby had been portly, even inclined to stoutness, and his face, though tough from wind and sun, inclined to be ruddy. The genial gray eyes had sparkled with confidence in himself and good-will toward all about him. At Silas Chamberlain's house a week ago the girl had noticed that Nathan let others arrange the business details of contracts and credentials, but his joy at meeting her had obscured the habitual sadness of his present manner. She had noticed that he was thinner, but to-night she saw the waste and aging which had consumed him.

The belt line which had bulged comfortably under the vest of five years ago was flat and flabby, the thick brown hair which had shown scarcely a thread of white was now grizzled and thin, the ruddy cheeks had fallen in, and two missing lower teeth made him whistle his s'es through the gap with a sound unlike his bluff speech of their first acquaintance, so that without the face which accompanied the words she could hardly have recognized the connection between the man who had and the man who did embody the same personality. The cogitations of the first half hour in the white counterpaned bed that night left Elizabeth in a maze of wonder over his physical as well as mental collapse.

Aunt Susan was evidently aware of changes also, for she hovered over him solicitously. Nathan Hornby was a broken man.

School opened auspiciously on Monday; John Hunter came and stayed to walk home with Elizabeth on Tuesday afternoon, and the glad weeks which followed were but the happy record of so many rides, walks, and talks, and the dreams of Elizabeth Farnshaw and John Hunter. He was with the girl daily. Elizabeth never expressed the smallest desire for anything human hand could obtain for her that John Hunter did not instantly a.s.sure her that she should receive it. If she stayed to sweep out the schoolhouse, John would almost certainly appear at the door before she had finished--his fields commanded a view of her comings and goings--if she went to Carter's to have a money order cashed he accompanied her; if she wished to go anywhere she had but to mention it and John Hunter and his team were at her service.

Elizabeth could not have been otherwise than happy. The spring, with its freshness and promise, was symbolical of the gladsome currents of her life that joyous April and May. Her lightest wish was the instant consideration of the man she admired above all others, and that man, in refinement of appearance and knowledge of the world, was as far above those of the country community in which they lived as the sun was above the smoky kerosene lamps by which the members of that community lighted themselves to bed.

John Hunter, during the season of his courtship, served the girl of his choice almost upon his knees. He made her feel that she could command his services, his time, and himself. By his request he ceased to ask when he could come again, but encouraged, even commanded, her to tell him when and where she wished to be taken and to let him come to see her unannounced.

He paid tribute to her as if she had been a G.o.ddess and he her devotee.

Silas looked on and chuckled.

"Didn't take 'em long," he remarked to Liza Ann, and when as usual his wife did not reply, he added: "Glad we're to have 'em for neighbours.

She's about th' liveliest meadow lark on these prairies, an' if she don't sing on a fence post it's 'cause she ain't built that way, an' can't; she's full enough to."

Susan Hornby looked on and had her misgivings. She saw the devotion the young man poured out at her darling's feet, and she knew that it was the fervour of the courting time in a man's life that made him abandon his own interests and plans while he plumed himself and pursued his desired mate.

She saw the rapturous, dreamy look of love and mating time in Elizabeth's eyes, and she knew that the inevitable had happened, but she was not content. Premonitions which she sought to strangle shook her whenever the pair wandered away on real or fict.i.tious errands. She saw that no word of love had yet been spoken, but every look cried it aloud and the day could not be far distant.

Between corn planting and corn plowing the foundations of the new house had been laid and work on it had progressed fitfully and whenever the young man could find time to help the occasional mason who laid brick and stone for simple foundations, and who had crops of his own to tend between times. The work had progressed slowly, but at last the wall had been finished and the carpenters had come to do their share. It gave excuse for many trips in the evening twilight. They usually went on horseback, and Silas's pony with Liza Ann's sidesaddle on its back had more business on hand that month than in all the other years of its lazy existence.

Susan Hornby watched the pair ride away one evening the first week in June. Nathan stood at her side on the doorstep.

"Of course he loves her; how could he help it? and yet----"

"And yet, what?" Nathan asked impatiently. "She wants him, an' he wants her, an' you stand there lookin' as if that wasn't enough."

Susan Hornby turned to her husband with some uncertainty regarding his comprehension of the subject, and with a gentle patience with his mood.

Nathan was often impatient of late.

"Yes, I know--only it seems as if----"

"Well, now what's lacking?" her husband asked when she again broke off the sentence doubtfully. "He's got a good farm, an' he needs a wife to help him run it. From what he says, his mother's too old t' be of any help. He can't run it alone, an' seems t' me it's a good thing for both of 'em."

"That's just it!" Susan Hornby broke out, turning back, her eyes following the progress of the pair toward the crimson west, her thoughts running ahead to the unknown future where the progress of the soul would be helped or hindered; "that's just it! He has a farm; now he's going to need a wife to help run it--just as he needs a horse. If he'd only be fair about it, but he's misleading her. She thinks he'll always do things the way he's doing them now, and he won't; there'll be an end to that kind of thing some day--and--and when they're married and he's got her fast, that kind of man won't be nice about it--and--they'll live on the farm--and life's so hard sometimes! Oh! I can't bear to see her broken to it!" she cried with such intensity that the man at her side caught his breath with a sort of sob.

"Anybody'd think to hear you talk, Susan, that marryin' was a thing to be feared, an' that I'd been mean t' you."

What had she done? There was a half-frightened pause as Susan Hornby struggled to bring herself back to the husband standing beside her who was broken by failure.

"Bless your old soul, Nate," she answered quickly, and with the flush of confusion on her face strangely like the flush of guilt, "if he's only half as good to her as you've been to me, She'll never have anything to complain of nor need anybody's sympathy."

Susan understood that her a.s.surance did not wholly rea.s.sure that bleeding heart, and to turn Nathan's thoughts to other things she slipped one hand through his arm, and picking up the milk pails from the bench at her side with the other, said with a little laugh:

"There now! I'll do your milking for that. You throw down the hay while I do it. There's nothing the matter with you and me, except that I've done a washing to-day and you don't sleep well of late. I haven't one thing in all this world to complain of, and this would be the happiest year of my life if you weren't a bit gloomy and under the weather. Come on--I'm nervous. You know I never am well in hot weather."

Nathan knew that Susan was really worried over Elizabeth's prospects, but her luckless remark upon the marriage of farmers cut into his raw, quivering consciousness of personal failure like a saw-bladed knife, torturing the flesh as it went. His failure to place her where her own natural characteristics and attainments deserved had eaten into his mind like acid. In proportion as he loved her and acknowledged her worth he was humiliated by the fact that she was not getting all out of life of which she was capable, as his wife, and it left him sensitive regarding her possible estimate of it.

"She always seems satisfied," he said to himself as he turned his pitchfork to get a hold on the pile into which he had thrust it, "but here she is pityin' this here girl that's goin' t' be married as if she goin'

t' be d.a.m.ned."

The Adam's apple in his wrinkled throat tightened threateningly, and to keep down any unmanly weakness it indicated he fell upon the hay savagely, but the suspicion stayed with him and left its bitter sting.

CHAPTER VI

"DIDN'T TAKE 'EM LONG"

John Hunter and Elizabeth Farnshaw rode away in the cool summer evening, wholly unconscious of the thoughts of others. The sun had dropped behind the low hills in front of them, and as they rode along, the light-floating clouds were dyed blazing tints of red and gold, as glowing and rosy as life itself appeared to the young pair. Elizabeth took off her hat and let the cool evening breeze blow through the waves of hair on her temples and about the smooth braids which, because of the heat of the prematurely hot summer day, had been wound about her head. Her eyes were dreamy and her manner detached as she let the pony wander a half length ahead of its companion, and she was unaware that John was not talking. She was just drinking in the freshness of the evening breeze and sky, scarcely conscious of any of her surroundings, glad as a kitten to be alive, and as unaware of self as a young animal should be.

John Hunter rode at her side, watching the soft curls on her round girlish neck, athrob and athrill with her presence, and trying to formulate the thing he had brought her out to say. It was not till they were turning into the lane beside the new house that his companion realized that he had been more than usually quiet.

"You are a Quaker to-night, evidently, and do not speak till the spirit moves, Mr. Hunter," she said, facing about near the gateway and waiting for him to ride alongside.

The young man caught the cue. "I wish you would call me John. I've been intending to ask you for some time. I have a given name," he added.

"Will you do the same?" she asked.

"Call myself John?" he replied.

They both laughed as if a great witticism had been perpetrated.

"No, call me by my given name."

"Lizzie, Bess, Elizabeth, or Sis?" he asked, remembering the various nicknames of her family.

"You may call me whatever you choose," she answered, drawing the pony up where they were to dismount.

John Hunter stepped to the ground and with his bridle rein over his arm came around to the left side of her pony. Laying one hand on its neck and the other on the hand that grasped its bridle, he looked up into her face earnestly and said:

"I would like to call you 'Wife,' if I may, Elizabeth," and held up his arms quickly to help her from the saddle.

When she was on the ground before him he barred her way and stood, pulsing and insistent, waiting for her answer.

It was a full minute before either moved, she looking down at their feet, he looking at her and trying to be sure he could push his claims.

When Elizabeth did look up it was with her eyes br.i.m.m.i.n.g shyly over with happy tears, and without waiting for her answer in words, John Hunter gathered her into his arms and smothered her face in kisses.

Ten minutes later they tied the horses to the new hitching post and pa.s.sed into the yard.

"It is to be your house and mine, dearie," the young man said, and then looked down at her to see why she did not answer.