Beyond his own three-quarters partition, Barry happened at the same moment to be standing before a mirror also—as men do sometimes, who would be sure to deny the charge were it publicly preferred against them. Yes, he was getting along. Not in any sense old, of course. To some a man of thirty-three seems still a young man. He tried to look at it that way. Still thirty-three was thirty-three. And Louise.... She was young, so young—and fresh, and sweet, and adorable.... His quiet eyes misted a moment as he thought of her. And for her sake he could wish himself one of those fabulous princes we read of in childhood. Ah, yes—a kind of prince—just for her sake! He regarded himself in the glass solemnly and critically. There were undeniable lines of salient maturity in his face; and princes, that was sure, never had any lines at all. So young, so sweet, so charming! He sighed and went about unpacking his things. That he should win her—that he should win this dear girl for his wife ...!
"I have done nothing to deserve such happiness as this," he said softly. "In all my life, nothing, nothing!"
And then he took a ring out of a little box and gazed at it. And when he had gazed at it a long time, he put it back in the box and put the box in his pocket.
Louise, in the seclusion of her room, no longer wept, though she still lay on the bed. Tears had relieved the strain, and her heart was not so burdened. Slowly reviving, she lay in a sort of half pleasant lethargy—not thinking, exactly, nor even actually feeling, for the moment. Tears are like suave drugs: under their mystic persuasion life may assume the lovely softness of a mirage. But the softness is fleeting. It rests and it is gone. It is like false dawn. Or it is like a dream of light when the night is blackest.
4
Marjory and Anna met outside the cottage in a little rustic bower where there was a hammock, and where the Rev. Needham had constructed, with his own hands, a clumsy and rather unstable rustic bench. It had taken him nearly all one summer to build this bench. The clergyman had perspired a great deal, and gone about with a dogged look. They were all mightily relieved when the task was at last completed. It seemed to simplify life.
Mrs. Needham sat on the rustic bench now, fanning herself with her white apron. Her face was flushed, her manner a little wild. She and Eliza had reached the agonizing conclusion that the raisins, indispensable to the Indian meal pudding, hadn't come, only to discover the little package lying out on the path where it had slipped from the grocer boy's basket. The pudding was saved, but what a shock to one's whole system!
"Well, Anna," said her sister, dropping fearlessly into the hammock. None but newcomers possessed that sublime faith in hammock ropes!
"I declare!" returned Anna. "Whew!"—her apron moving rapidly—"So warm!"