Rast did not admire the old-fashioned ring, but to Anne it was both beautiful and sacred. She gazed at it with a lovely light in her eyes, and an earnest thoughtfulness. Any one could see how gravely she regarded the little ceremony.
When they came back to the house, Dr. Gaston was already there, and Père Michaux was limping up the path from the gate. He caught sight of Rast and Anne together. "Check!" he said to himself. "So much for being a stupid old man. Outwitted yesterday by a rolling stone, and to-day by your own inconceivable dullness. And you gave away your watch—did you?—to prevent what has happened! The girl has probably bound herself formally, and now you will have her conscience against you as well as all the rest. Bah!"
But while thinking this, he came forward and greeted them all happily and cheerfully, whereas the old chaplain, who really had no especial objection to the engagement, was cross and silent, and hardly greeted anybody. He knew that he was ill-tempered, and wondered why he should be. "Anything unexpected is apt to disturb the mind," he remarked, apologetically, to the priest, taking out his handkerchief and rubbing his forehead violently, as if to restore equanimity by counter-circulation. But however cross or quiet the others might be, Miss Lois beamed for all; she shed forth radiance like Roman candles even at that early hour, when the air was still chill and the sky gray with mist. The boys came down stairs with their clothes half on, and then Rast said good-by, and hurried down to the pier, and they all stood together on the old piazza, and watched the steamer back out into the stream, turn round, and start westward, the point of the island soon hiding it from view. Then Dr. Gaston took his unaccountable ill temper homeward, Père Michaux set sail for the hermitage, Anne sat down to sew, and only Miss Lois let every-day life take care of itself, and cried on.
"I know there will be no more storms," she said; "it isn't that. But it is everything that has happened, Anne dear: the engagement, and the romance of it all!"
Tita now entered: she had not appeared before. She required that fresh coffee should be prepared for her, and she obtained it. For the Irish soldier's wife was almost as much afraid of her as the boys were. She glanced at Miss Lois's happy tears, at Anne's ruby ring, at the general disorder.
"And all this for a mere boy!" she said, superbly.
Miss Lois stopped crying from sheer astonishment. "And pray, may I ask, what are you?" she demanded.
"A girl; and about on a line with the boy referred to," replied Miss Tita, composedly. "Anne is much too old."
The boys gave a laugh of scorn. Tita turned and looked at them, and they took to the woods for the day. Miss Lois cried no more, but began to sew; there was a vague dread in her heart as to what the winter would be with Tita in the church-house. "If I could only cut off her hair!" she thought, with a remembrance of Samson. "Never was such hair seen on any child before."
As Tita sat on her low bench, the two long thick braids of her black hair certainly did touch the floor; and most New England women, who, whether from the nipping climate or their Roundhead origin, have, as a class, rather scanty locks, would have agreed with Miss Lois that "such a mane" was unnatural on a girl of that age—indeed, intolerable.