Then he took heart of grace—he came close to her.
“But if there was some one to work for you,” said he. “If we was wed, so to speak?”
She didn’t move, but her eyes grew startled, and then just a touch of hardness came back into her face.
“Ye didn’t say that up yonder,” said she.
“No,” he said, “I’ll allow I was startled a bit at first. But ... well, I know as you’re a good woman somehow ... and I love ye, Jenny—there! So if you can forget, well, so can I.”
She stood, with her lips parted, gazing straight out across the field—but a film of tears gathered slowly across her eyes.
Neither spoke, and the minutes sped by as in a dream, while the stars rained down their tenderness.
But as she stood there with that sweet seriousness of thought on her simple face, the babe, missing its lullaby, sent forth a piteous wail from within.
Then she sprang to its side, and snatching it to her breast and bending o’er it a face, tender as the moonlight that bathed her, she whispered softly:
“I’ll think on it.”