The statement had been carefully equipped with earmarks of the interrogative, so that, should it happen to prove incorrect, refutation would take the form of a simple answer to an ingenuous and perfectly natural question. The Rev. Needham found it urgent to keep his inflections always slightly interrogative. There was even a sly, sneaking hint of the useful question mark throughout the reverend man's theology. Ghastly as the thing must sound spoken right out, it is really doubtful whether the Rev. Needham would be caught altogether napping were the entire Bible suddenly to be proved spurious! Of course when Barry admitted that there was less rainfall in the southern part, then the minister rocked with subtly renewed purpose, slapping the arms of his chair exactly as an acknowledged authority on rainfall might be expected to do. But of course it was all ever so much subtler than this makes it appear. It was infinitely more delicate than any mere I-told-you-so attitude.
"You know," continued Barry, who felt an unpleasant thickness in his throat, "the sorghums have to be able to withstand a great deal of drought. They roll up their leaves and seem to sleep for months at a time; and when the rain comes again they revive quickly and make rapid strides."
Inside the cottage sat Louise. She was huddled miserably over a book. She was not reading the book, though it chanced to be a very absorbing historical novel. It is hard to conceive of a young lady's not reading such a work with avidity and even breathlessness, under the circumstances. But to be perfectly accurate, Louise hadn't even opened the historical novel. It simply lay in her lap, and she was huddled over it. Her eyes were dry. She was utterly miserable. And just outside, in the full, fresh sweetness of diminishing dayshine, sat the man who had come all this way to put a ring on her finger. He was sitting out there in the romantic richness of the tinted evening, and he was talking about the sorghums!
Oh, a wise plant is the sorghum. When there is a drought it rolls up its leaves and waits till it is time for the refreshment of another rain. The sorghum knows well how to plan and bide its time. The sorghum would not give itself too easily....
Out on the rustic bench which her dear father had so laboriously constructed sat Hilda. She was listening for steps in the sand. She would know whose steps they were when they drew close. It was growing quite dusky underneath the trees. The stars would soon be appearing. There had been a slight breeze all the afternoon, but it had died away; and on the beach the tiny waves were whispering that it had passed that way and was now still. The trees stood very quiet, but occasionally a squirrel would whisk by overhead. The squirrels, however, were turning in for the night now, and soon there would be no stir left save only the night stir of the woods. Far off sounded at intervals the shouts of young children—children younger than Hilda, and unfettered as yet by any sweet obligation of sitting very breathless, listening for steps in the sand.
"How lovely everything is!" thought Hilda.
When she saw Leslie she ran out to meet him—no mooning pretense at not having heard.
"Oh, Les, why don't you light it?"
He carried a Japanese lantern and was swinging it about in a very reckless way.