“It is nothing you have done, don’t think that,” he said earnestly. “You can’t help being sweet and pretty, any more than that bird up there can help singing. And you can’t help being just what I want. You have treated me the same as you have others, that is, I mean you never tried in any way to make me love you. It just came. And if you will only try—”
“If I did try, Dick, I should be ashamed to confess that I could not love so good, and tender, and true a man as you are. Then, perhaps I might marry you, not loving you the best, which would be very, very wicked, and ruin your happiness. Oh, Dick, forgive me and let me be your sister or your friend, or else let me go quite away. I am so sorry.”
They walked on until the sound of voices reached them. “Please leave me here,” she entreated falteringly.
“I’m a great blundering chap, I know. I might have said it all better—”
“It isn’t the saying, it is the thing itself.—O, Dick, don’t you see that if I had loved you, one word would have been enough. I should be too honest to tease or make excuses.”
“Yes, I suppose it is so,” in a slow, pathetic way that made Fan think she was a miserable wretch. “And you can’t help it, I know. I’ll try to—leave matters as they were, to be a—brother.”
He swallowed over a great lump in his throat, and turned away without another word. When she found herself quite alone she threw her trembling figure on the mossy tree-roots and sobbed bitterly. The glad unconsciousness of girlhood was over.
“If he were not so good,” she thought, “or so rich, or so kind! If I could find some fault. And that makes it appear all the worse in me. Oh, papa, dear, what have I done? Why does every one want to—?”
And then she knew it was the old, old story, that had began way back in Eden-days. People always did, and always would, and sometimes there was a hitch and a snarl, and the thread broke.
She heard the bell calling the children together, so she rose, and went to the tiny brook to bathe her face. But she felt so shame-faced and cowardly that she did not dare join them until the singing was done. Then Dick would be putting Mrs. Ryder in his wagon, and all the others bustling about. No one would take much notice of her.