The hot sun blazed fiercely down on his thinly clad back, and he noticed as he struggled through the tasselling corn that the leaves were already firing about the roots. Rain was essential, but he reflected that enough rain to do the corn any good would ruin the small grain now ready to cut. “Kansas luck,” he muttered as he crossed the deep ridges thrown up by his own cultivator a few days before. Not a breath of air was stirring, and by the time he had reached the house he was hot and tired. Reflecting that John had taken Elizabeth to Chamberlain’s, he decided to rest before he started back with the heavy water-jugs. He stopped in the kitchen for a drink and took a small bottle out of his pocket.
“Two, I guess, this time,” he said as he poured the tablets into his hand. He dropped his finger on the other wrist a moment, and then swallowed both pellets.
Elizabeth heard him settle himself in a rocking chair with a long-drawn breath of comfort. She was giving Jack little pats to ease him off to sleep and the house was very quiet. She decided to keep still and let him return to the field without seeing her tear-stained face, but Jack roused with a low whimpering cry which she felt sure Hugh must have heard, and as soon as the child was asleep she walked out without further effort at concealment.
At the noise of the opening door Hugh Noland sprang to his feet in surprise; he had been half-asleep.
“Why, I didn’t know that you were here!” he exclaimed when he saw that it was Elizabeth. “I thought you went to Chamberlain’s.”
His eyes riveted themselves upon her swollen eyelids, and when she stood embarrassed before him and did not reply readily, conscious only of his searching gaze, he misunderstood and added gravely:
“Elizabeth, there is something I must speak about. I cannot have you worried over matters between us——”
Elizabeth Hunter’s eyes ceased to be shy and troubled and came up to his in such complete astonishment that he broke off in confusion.
There was a pause for one short second, and then Elizabeth spoke in nervous haste, and as if to ward off something.
“I—I—I wasn’t crying about—that is, I hurt Jack accidentally and—and John misunderstood.”