"No," answered Dilly, smiling at him with the radiance of one who carries good news, "except night-time! There's a good deal in that!" And while Eli went gravely on, pondering according to his wont, she ran up to smooth her tumbled bed.
After breakfast, while Mrs. Pike was carrying away the dishes, Dilly called Jethro softly to one side.
"You come out in the orchard. I want to speak to you."
Her voice thrilled with something like the gladness of confidence, and Jethro's own face brightened. Dilly read that vivid anticipation, and caught her breath. Though she knew it now, the old charm would never be quite gone. She took his hand and drew him forward. She seemed like a child, unaffected and not afraid. Out in the path, under the oldest tree of all, she dropped his hand and faced him.
"Jethro," she said, "we can't do it. We can't get married."
He looked at her amazed. She seemed to be telling good news instead of bad. She gazed up at him smilingly. He could not understand.
"Don't you care about me?" he asked at length, haltingly; and again Dilly smiled at him in the same warm confidence.
"Oh, yes," she said eagerly. "I do care, ever and ever so much. But it's your folks I care about. It ain't you. I've found it all out, Jethro. Things don't al'ays belong to us. Sometimes they belong to them that have gone before; an' half the time we don't know it."
Jethro laid a gentle hand upon her arm. "You're all tired out," he said soothingly. "Now you give up picking over things, and let me hire somebody. I'll be glad to."
But Dilly withdrew a little from his touch. "You're real good, Jethro," she answered steadily. She had put aside her exaltation, and was her old self, full of common-sense and kindly strength. "But I don't feel tired, an' I ain't a mite crazed. All you can do is to ride over to town with Eli—he's goin' after he feeds the pigs—an' take the cars from there. It's all over, Jethro. It is, truly. I ain't so sorry as I might be; for it's borne in on me you won't care this way long. An' you needn't, dear; for nothin' between us is changed a mite. The only trouble is, it ain't the kind of thing we thought."