Her companion turned and looked at her sharply. The anxious little face in the evening’s glow looked wonderfully sweet and innocent. He read her thought. “No,” he answered shortly. Then he quickened his pace and strode on ahead of her, leaving her feeling half indignant, half overcome with humility.
They found Jerry Hunter established by the fireside, and Polly chaffing him and joining in his big laugh. Somehow, the boisterousness jarred on Agnes. She wished that she might be alone, or that it was her mother—her mother—who would be there to give her a gentle greeting, and who would listen so patiently and sympathetically to all her doubts and perplexities. Then her conscience smote her; for whatever her faults, who was kinder than Polly? Who more lenient, more ready to cheer and comfort? Even now as the girl entered, Polly’s eyes sought her, and the loud laugh upon her lips died away.
“Come, lass,” she said, “Jerry has fetched us a fine haunch of venison. Go you out and bring in some of that fox-grape jelly we made, and we’ll be having a feast to-night. The child’s sad at parting from Archie,” she said to the others as Agnes went out; “we must try to cheer her up a bit.” And indeed, Agnes did seem depressed and silent more than was her wont.
And so it was that Archie M’Clean went back to Carlisle, and Agnes missed him more than she liked to confess. The youths of the settlement had taken it as a matter of course that Agnes would be escorted everywhere by Archie, and in consequence they had sought other partners, so she felt herself suddenly bereft of those pleasant attentions which every girl likes. She prepared rather soberly for the church the next Sabbath, and was surprised upon coming out to join Polly and her father to find Parker Willett waiting for her. “Will you ride to church with me?” he asked with a magnificent bow.
Agnes swept him quite as elegant a courtesy. “An’ it please you, kind sir, I will accompany you,” she replied. And then they both laughed.
“I thought perhaps you’d miss your swain, the knight of the rueful countenance, and it will seem like old times to me when I used to take my little sister to church,” he said, as he lifted her up.
“Oh, have you a little sister?”
“Yes, or rather she is quite a big sister now.”
“Tell me about her.”
He took his place with an easy grace, and as they started off he said, “She’s back there in Virginia, married these two or three years.”