“You said sometimes, only sometimes.”
“I mean very often.” He looked down at her but checked the word that rose to his lips. “It would not be fair,” he told himself. “I have my way to make,” he said aloud, “and there are some things, some ties there at home, you know, some things that in honor I cannot forget.”
“Yes.” It was all that Agnes could say, but she was comforted beyond words, and the glory of the west was reflected on the face of each as they turned from the hilltop toward the little cabin nestled in the shadows at the foot of the hill.
CHAPTER X
HONEY
The next morning Parker started forth in search of his land. Agnes watched him from her loft room; a new feeling of interest possessed her. This man who had come to them first as an interloper, and next had taken his place as a member of the household, was now become a person of the greatest consideration to her. How strange it seemed! Was his feeling for her only one of comradeship, or of pity for her loneliness? She remembered his warm clasp of her hand, the look he gave her as they turned their backs to the sunset. “Oh, I am happy,” she murmured, “and I want my mother.” She was so long and so quiet up there in her little room that Polly at last called to her, “Your baby is fretting for you.”
Then Agnes hurried down to take Honey in her arms and to carry him out into the spring sunshine where her father was working. Honey chuckled with glee at sight of Fergus Kennedy. He had taken a great fancy to both father and daughter, and preferred to be with them rather than to play with Polly’s children, who, it must be confessed, were inclined to “put upon him,” as Polly herself declared.
Jimmy was bestirring himself and filling the place with his large, cheerful presence. “How different, how different he is from Parker,” Agnes thought. Polly was boisterous enough, but Polly, supplemented by a being twice as big and noisy and loud-voiced, gave Agnes a sense of being overpowered. She would not have admitted to any one that Polly was not a joy, a delightful companion, but it was nevertheless a fact that Polly and Jimmy were too much for her, in certain moods, and this morning she was glad to escape from the house.
The news of Jimmy’s return brought many of the neighbors to see him and to hear of his exploits; some came, too, to offer aid in whatever direction he might require. “It’s but me forge I want,” he told them all, “wanst I have that, I’ll make mesel’ useful to ye all.”
Parker Willett’s going to hunt up a claim was a subject that Agnes did not care to hear discussed, though as she went out of the house she heard Polly say: “It’s the dilicate way he’s been brought up, maybe; but he’s been pinin’ for his own this manny a day, I’ll be bound, an’ belike he’s a lass at home that he’s thinking of goin’ back for. Faith! he’d ought to be married; he’s old enough this long while.”