“It’s precisely what ought to happen,” Esther said to herself more than once; and the smile in her eyes as she said it suggested that there was no vagueness in her mind as to what the happening should be. Sometimes when the smile was gone a wistful look came in its place, but if she had any regrets or longings of her own, she told them to no one.
The spring vacation in the schools came with the Easter, early that year. Esther laid plans valiantly at the outset for work to be accomplished in the space between terms, but she had grown thoroughly tired of her needle on the afternoon of the second day, when her father announced suddenly that he was going to drive out to the farm. There were matters connected with the spring planting to be talked over with Jake Erlock.
“What do you say to my going with you?” she exclaimed, dropping her work. “It’s ever so long since I went out there, and I feel just like it.”
There was nothing Dr. Northmore enjoyed more than having one of his daughters with him when he took a long drive. “That’s a capital idea,” he said. “Get your things on quick.”
Spring was coming along the track of the wide straight road by which they took their way to the pretty uplands which were the doctor’s pride and care.
Here and there broad fields of wheat were already showing a tender green from the springing of the grain which had lain all winter under frost and snow, and between them new-ploughed fields sent up a pleasant smell, the wholesome smell of the kindly earth turning itself again to the sun and the rain.
The little gray house, set back from the road, wore its old shy look, and the occupant, who greeted them as they drove up to the door, seemed like one who, in his solitary wintering, might have sat asleep on his hearth, coming out half timidly now to greet the warmth and stir of the world. He lost his air of uncertainty as he saw his callers, and welcomed them to his kitchen, which was orderly as ever, setting chairs for them about his fire with a bustling hospitality. Esther did not keep her place long. A few kindly inquiries, a polite listening to his report of the winter, and then she left the two men together, and slipped away for a stroll by herself through the orchard and along the edge of the field where the threshing had gone on so blithely in the summer past.
The straw-stack was there to remind of it still, not fair and golden now, but gray and weather-beaten from the winter storms. It had grown smaller with the passing months, and a great hollow had been worn in its side by the browsing cattle. On the soft matted floor of this inner shelter lay two calves, one with its pretty, fawn-like head resting on the dark red neck of the other. They turned soft wondering eyes to the girl as she looked in upon them, and a sitting hen, so near the color of the straw that at first she did not see her, ruffled warningly from her nest in the side.
She did not disturb them in their quiet retreat, but sat down for a little while in the warm friendliness beside their open door, and thought half-dreamily of that day that was gone. What a bustle of work had filled the place! She could see the puffing engine sending up its quick black breath against the sky, and the great crimson machine, like a chariot, at its back, with Morton Elwell at the front, a charioteer holding the car of plenty on its way, amid a score of sunburnt outriders. How confident he had looked as he stood there in his workman’s dress, bare-armed and bare-throated, how strong and steady!
She smiled at her own fancy. And then the rest of the picture faded, leaving the one figure alone; but it was not at the threshing she saw him now, it was at home, at school, on the playground, and everywhere her comrade, her champion, her friend. Had he been something more in those old days, and was he still? Ah, if she could be sure of that! The letters had lost the old boyish freedom in these last months. She had complained once that Morton Elwell took too much for granted. He was taking nothing now.