"Ach, I can work enough to-day yet. I like company and I don't have much of it week-days. Um, ain't it good smelly after the rain?" She sniffed, smiling, as she followed Phœbe and David down the path to the barnyard.
"Good-bye," she called as they drove off. "Safe home."
"Thank you. Good-bye," Phœbe called over the side of the carriage. Then, as they entered again upon the country road, she turned to her place beside David.
She looked up at him. All the light and joy had faded from his face; he stared straight head, though he must have felt her eyes' intent gaze upon him.
"David," she said softly, "what is wrong?"
"Nothing," he lied.
"Seems you look different," she persisted. "Is it anything about Caleb Warner's death?"
"I'm not much of a stoic, Phœbe. I should have hidden my worry. But you must forget it; we must not let it spoil our perfect day. It really is no great matter. I am affected, in some way you can't know, by his death, but I'll get over it," he tried to treat the matter lightly.
But Phœbe felt a sudden heaviness of heart. She was almost certain that David had had no money to buy any stock from Caleb Warner, therefore, she jumped to the conclusion, it must be that David cared for Mary Warner, as town gossip said he did, and that the death of the girl's father would affect him. She felt hurt and baffled and sorely rebuffed at the withholding of David's confidence and was worried as she saw the marks of worry in the face of the man. Womanlike, she felt certain that the other girl was not good enough for David. Mary Warner, beautiful, aristocratic in bearing and manner—what had she to do with a man like David Eby! Was an incipient engagement with Mary Warner the Aladdin's lamp David had mentioned several times as being on the verge of rubbing and thus become rich? The thought left her trembling; she shivered in the April sunshine. When David spoke it was with an abstracted manner, and the girl beside him finally said, "Oh, don't let us talk. Let us just sit and look at the fields and enjoy the scenery."
She said it calmly enough, but the man beside her could not know that it required the last shreds of her courage to keep her voice from breaking. She would not let David see that she cared if he did care for Mary Warner! Of course, she didn't want to marry him, it was merely that she knew Mary was too haughty for him. Mother Bab would also say that he was too different from Mary, that he was too fine for her. Then she remembered that Mother Bab had said on the previous evening that the Warners had taken David to Hershey recently in their fine new car. She shook herself in an effort at self-control. "Phœbe," she thought, "you're selfish! You go to Philadelphia and you go out with Royal Lee and dance with other young men, and yet, when David pays attention to another girl you have a spasm!"
