CHAPTER XXI. A HOPE OF CHANGE.
They were christening Marrion’s new spider, Robert and Cherokee.
“We will drive an hour or so longer, if you are not too tired.”
“I am not at all tired; let us go on,” she insisted.
“I will show you where Latham’s fiancee lives,” he carelessly proposed.
“When are they to be married?” she asked, scarcely above her breath.
“I don’t know the date, but she will get one of the finest boys on earth. They will have this magnificent country home to spend their summers in, and that is such a blessing—the air out there is so pure and sweet and healthful. It is a great pity that everybody can’t get an occasional taste of country life.”
“I did not know we had come so far, but here we are in the woods—the real country. I can almost hear the frogs calling from slushy banks, and the faint, intermittent tinkle of cow-bells stealing over pasture lands. I do love the country!” she exclaimed, fervently.
“So do I,” laughed Robert, “but the country has its tragedies, too. For example: my old-maid Aunt once made me weed the onion bed on circus day. I would have had to ride a stick horse to the town, four miles away, where the tent was pitched, but children would do almost anything to get to a circus.”
“Yet you did not get to that one?” asked Cherokee, gaily.
“No, and for fifteen years I treasured that against my Aunt.”
“And I should not wonder if you hold it still.”
He dropped his voice to the register of tenderness and said, sadly: “I hold nothing against her now. The dear old creature had sorrow enough—she died unmarried.”
Then they came to the home he was to show her.
After that there was a lull in the conversation.
If Cherokee had but known that the plighted troth was broken—had gone all to pieces, in fact—she might have felt some relief for that dull ache she felt. Suddenly she turned to her husband:
“Robert, I have a great favor to ask?”
“What’s that?”
“Let’s take a vacation. Change would help us both.”
“I am too busy, Cherokee, I cannot leave my work now. People are never contented. Those in the depths of the country sigh for the city excitement, and those in the city long to be soaked in sunshine and tangled in green fields.”
“I suppose it is selfish. I shall not ask you again,” she answered, resignedly.
“If things were different, nothing would please me more than to take an outing by mountains or seaside.”
“Neither for me,” she answered. “I would rather spend the summer down at my old home in Kentucky; you know my cousin owns it, and no one lives there at present. I should like to go back where I could sit again beneath a big, low moon, and hear the reapers sing—where I could see the brown gabled barns, and smell the loose hay-mows’ scented locks.”
“If that’s all, you can go to any farm and see as much.”
“That isn’t half; I want to see my mother’s grave, with its headstone that briefly tells her record, ‘She made home happy,’” and then she said, with a little sigh: “There is still another reason—I would have you all to myself a whole season.”
“Would you really like that?” he asked, brightening.
“More than anything.”
“Then I promise you, you shall go.”
As they drove up to the stoop, upon their return, they saw Marrion waiting.
When he assisted Cherokee to the street, he fancied he never had seen in her manner so much softness, so much of that sweet, wonted look that goes with domestic charm. Her fine, regular features expressed nothing sadder than a pleased pensiveness.