“That is true, too. Well, Jeanie, it is too early yet to cook the feast, but I will be here on Monday and give you all the help I can. I have left my mother so much of late that I must hurry back now.”
“Can’t you stay?” said Jeanie, wistfully. “I would like to have one more talk about our girlhood before I am made a wife. There is much I have to tell and much I want to hear.”
Agnes hesitated; it seemed unkind to refuse the request, yet her mother must be considered. “I promised I would not stay long,” she said.
“I will send one of the children over to say that you will stay,” said Jeanie, eagerly, and to this Agnes consented.
“If Archie were only here,” sighed Jeanie, “my happiness would be complete, and yours, too, wouldn’t it, Nancy?”
“I am very content as it is,” Agnes told her. “Pray, Jeanie, don’t think of Archie’s ever being nearer to me than a friend. He is a dear good lad, but he will bring you a sister more worthy of his calling than I could be.”
“He will bring me none that I would rather have,” returned Jeanie, stoutly, “and as for the worthiness, it is but experience you need, mother says. Ah, no, Nancy, I shall not give you up yet.”
But Agnes’s thoughts were drifting off to the hillside and the sunset, and she suddenly sprang to her feet. “I cannot stay, Jeanie, I really cannot. I forgot that little Fergus is ailing, and that Polly is all tired out with her soap-making. I ought to go home, but I will come again and spend a night with you. I will come to-morrow, and then we can go to meeting together and I will be here on Monday all ready to begin the day’s work with you, for I can stay over Sabbath as well as not.” And with this arrangement Jeanie was so well pleased that she let her friend go without further protest.
Agnes hurried along with a feeling that she must reach the hilltop before sundown, and true enough she was rewarded by a sight of a skiff drawn up on the sands, and she knew it to be Parker Willett’s. She hastened her steps and found that he had caught sight of her and that he was coming to meet her.
“I am fortunate,” he said as he came up, “for I might have missed you.”