Alison laughed merrily. “You don’t know what twenty years can do to a woman, especially down here where people grow careless.”
Blythe’s eyes roved over Alison’s neat dress, her soft hair, smooth and tidy except where the little curling tendrils were blown about her face by the breeze, and he shook his head. “She could never look like Hannah Maria,” he insisted.
“If she turns out to be half as good and unselfish, she may count herself lucky,” said Alison. “Hannah Maria may not be beautiful in face and figure, but she has a beautiful spirit, as our minister at home used to say. Do you ever get homesick, Blythe? I do.”
“Yes, I do sometimes, but never when I am with you.”
“You should not get homesick when you are not with me, for you have a home and a mother. I wish I had a mother.”
“You don’t know how good my mother is,” said Blythe eagerly. “She often says that when I bring home a wife she will love her as her own daughter.”
“How pleasant for your wife. I hope that in that long, long time to come, when you are judge and have found the right girl, your mother will still feel the same way. I shall probably have been married years by that time, and I will come to your wedding and say, ‘Law, I remember when Blythe Van Dorn was a snip of a boy and used to tell me what he meant to do when he was a man. He hasn’t married a girl a bit like what he thought he would.’”
At this final shot the boy of twenty grew suddenly moody, arose from his place in the oak tree’s cool shade and went to where his horse was picketed. “Good-bye,” he said.
“Going?” called Alison cheerily. “If you see Hannah Maria as you are passing, tell her I shall be home in time for supper.”