“I wish you were going back with us,” Ray said at last. “It breaks my heart to go away so soon and leave you. Why won’t you let me ask my uncle to take you? He might be glad to do it, just for me.”
“No,” answered Chip, firmly, “you mustn’t. It would shame me so that I couldn’t look them in the face.” Then, as if this subject and their own feelings must be avoided, she added hurriedly, “Tell me what you will do when the folks come back–whether you will come with them or stay at the lake?”
“Stay there, I suppose,” answered Ray, somewhat doggedly, for money-making and love were in conflict. “Old Cy says we can make a lot of money if I will. I wish I were rich,” he added with a sigh.
He was not the first young man to whom that wish had come at such a moment. But converse between them was at ebb tide just now, and the parting moment, ever creeping nearer, overshadowed all else. To Chip–known only to herself–it meant forever. To Ray, another long isolation from all the world and young associates, and all for a few hundred dollars sorely needed by him, yet seeming of scant value compared to the sweet companionship of this maid.
Then Chip’s feelings and the reason for them were quite beyond him. He could not see why she was unwilling to ask to be taken to the woods again, nor why she held herself aloof from him. She had not done so at the lake, or when they met again, and why should she now?
Something of this might have been inferred by Chip, for she suddenly arose.
“I think we’d best go back,” she said. “It’s time, and Hannah will be watching for me.”
What Ray might have said had he been a world-wise man, does not matter. What he did was to pick up his useless banjo, and clasping Chip’s arm, led her along the winding walk.
Below the falls and near the house they paused, for now the last moment alone together had come, and with it the real parting.
“Tell Old Cy I–I haven’t forgot him,” whispered Chip, her voice quivering, “and–and–you won’t forget me either, will you, Ray?”