"Isn't there something else?" he pleaded.
"I reckon not," she whispered.
She must have moved silently, for in a few moments her voice called a good night from the broken gate.
He opened his eyes then, and moved toward his patient horse. He had a feeling that he may not have carried this interview gracefully; but he had done it honestly, and at real personal cost. He began to wonder what it might have cost Nancy—he had given that no thought. Were she a girl of Jane's type, he suspected she would now be hating him. But she was not like Jane; she was Nancy; and, even as his intuition whispered, her cheeks were still flushed with a pleasant warmth of satisfaction. To her it had been romantic and grateful. She seemed to feel that they were honorably at quits.
CHAPTER XVI
A SPRINGTIME SANTA CLAUS
As May crept up the calendar the little schoolhouse became the center of increased activity: commencement exercises were under daily rehearsal and the light of excited interest shone in every face.
It was a heterogeneous flock which had answered the call of Jane's horn eight months before: twenty-nine in all, ranging from children of eight to a woman of thirty-five. Nor were their characteristics less diverse. The tobacco-chewing, profane boy was there, with a stolen dirk thrust into his trousers' band, suggesting a turbulent future; and the girl, with the narrow forehead and close, deep-set eyes, was there, pathologically indicating tendencies to kleptomania. But far outweighing these were the straight, courageous bearing and the tender faces of normal promise. Sturdy manhood and womanhood was written across the countenances of many who had answered the call of Jane's horn!
Nancy was not one of this wholesome medley. She was being especially taught aside;—and now, on this mid-May day, Jane sat with her beneath the trees while the room within was wrapped in the unrestful silence of tedious thought. Occasionally the teacher glanced at her when she happened to sigh and bend more intently over the knotty problem on her lap. Dale might have been here with them, for he had made strides during the past four weeks which put him far in the van, and Jane was satisfying this bewildering pace with extra work for the afternoons at home. For his was, indeed, a bewildering pace, spurred by an insatiable ambition that had become brutal in its determination to absorb every lesson, every fact and figure, every little jot of information which her schoolhouse and the Colonel's library contained. His time, from early morning until late at night, was divided between these places; but he advanced with so much greater speed in the seclusion of Arden that Jane had lately persuaded him to work there, rather than be subjected to the schoolroom noises which were as multitudinous as they were unavoidable. Thus it was that she and Nancy now sat alone beneath the trees.