Alida opened the gate and, without a glance at her mother, stepped out upon the dusty path. People said Mrs. Roe talked so much that everybody had long ago done listening to her, and perhaps she had done expecting it.
"You'd ought to have suthin' over your head," she called to Alida. "You'll be 's black as an Injun."
Dorcas took a long stride into the roadside tangle and broke off a branch of thick-leaved elder. She gave it to Alida, and the girl gravely shaded herself with it from the defacing sun. They walked along together in silence for a moment, and Dorcas frankly studied Alida's face. There was no sign of grief upon it, of loneliness, of discontent. The skin was like a rose, a fainter, pinker rose than Dorcas had ever seen. The soft lips kept their lovely curve.
"'Lida," she breathed, "what you goin' to do to-night?"
"I don't know," said Alida, in her even voice. "Sometimes I sew, when it ain't too hot. I'm makin' me a dotted muslin."
Dorcas found her own heart beating fast. The excitement of it all, of life itself, the bliss, the pain and loss, came keenly on her. She thought of the days that had gone to buying this thing of prettiness, the strained muscles, the racing blood and thrilling brain, the sweat and toil of it, and something choked her to think that now the pretty thing was almost won. Newell would have it, his heart's desire, and in thirty years perhaps it would look like Alida's mother with that shallow mouth. Yet her simple faithfulness was a part of her own blood, and she could not deny him what was his.
"Alida," she said, in an eloquent throb, "do you—do you like him?"
"Who?" asked Alida calmly, turning clear eyes upon her.
Dorcas laughed shamefacedly.
"I don't know hardly what I'm talkin' about," she said. "I've worked pretty hard to-day. 'Lida, if there was anybody you liked, anybody you want to talk things over with—well"—she paused to laugh a little—"well, if I were you, I should just put on my blue dress, the one with the pink rosebuds, an' walk along this road down to the pine grove an' back again."