This sentence was rather obscure, and Barbara still looked at Tom inquiringly and waited for him to explain. But he only went on in the same inconsequential way, as he plucked and rubbed out another poppy-head. "I don't care for anything nowadays, but just to stay with you and mother. When a fellow's been through what I have, I suppose he isn't ever the same that he was; it takes the ambition out of you. Hanging makes an awful change in your feelings, you know"; and he smiled grimly.
"Don't say that; you make me shiver," said Barbara.
"But I say, Barb," and with this Tom sowed broadcast all the poppy-seed in his hand, "yonder comes somebody over the hill that'll get a warmer welcome than Rachel did, I'll guarantee."
How often in the last week had Barbara looked to see if somebody were not coming over the hill! Now she found her vision obstructed by a "laylock" bush, and she came down the path to where her brother stood. As soon as she had made out that the pedestrian was certainly Hiram Mason, she turned and went into the house, to change her apron for a fresher one, and with an instinctive wish to hide from Mason a part of the eagerness she had felt for his coming. But when he had reached the gate and was having his hand cordially shaken by Tom, Barbara came back to the door to greet him; and just because she couldn't help it, she went out on the porch, then down the steps and half-way to the gate to tell him how glad she was to see him.
XXXI
HIRAM AND BARBARA
The cordiality of his welcome was a surprise to Mason; he could hardly tell why. The days had dragged heavily since his separation from Barbara, and his mind had been filled with doubts. The delay imposed upon him by Barbara's circumstances and then by his own was unwholesome; love long restrained from utterance is apt to make the soul sick. During his last week in Moscow he had copied court minutes and other documents into the folio records in an abstracted fashion, while the conscious part of his intellect was debating his chance of securing Barbara's consent. He fancied that she might hold herself more than ever aloof from him now; that her pride had been too deeply wounded to recover, and that she would never bring herself to accept him.
When he had at length finished all there was for him to do in the clerk's office at Moscow, and Magill had contrived to borrow enough money to pay him his fifty cents a day, Mason was too impatient to wait for some wagon bound for the Timber Creek neighborhood. He started on foot, intending to pass the night under the friendly roof of the Graysons, and to push on homeward in the morning; for he would already be a month late in beginning his college year. His mind was revolving the plan of his campaign against Barbara's pride all the way over the great lonely level prairie, the vista of which stretched away to the west until it was interrupted by a column of ominous black smoke, which told of the beginning of the autumnal prairie fires that annually sweep the great grassy plains and keep them free of trees. At length the tantalizing forest, so long in sight, was reached, and he entered the pale fringe of slender poplar-trees—that forlorn hope thrown out by the forest in its perpetual attempt to encroach on a prairie annually fire-swept. But when at last he entered the greater forest itself, now half denuded of its shade, the problem was still before him. He contrived with much travail of mind what seemed to him an ingenious device for overcoming Barbara's fear of his family. He would propose that his mother should write her a letter giving a hearty assent to his proposal of marriage. If that failed, he could not think of any other plan likely to be effective.
Like many conversations planned in absence, this one did not seem so good when he had the chance to test it. The way in which Tom welcomed him at the gate, shaking his hand and taking hold of his arm in an affectionate, informal way, gave him an unexpected pleasure, though nothing could be more natural under the circumstances than Tom's gratitude. And when Tom said, "Barbara'll be awful glad to see you, an' so'll Mother," Mason was again surprised. Not that he knew any good reason why Barbara and her mother should not be glad to see him, but he who broods long over his feelings will hatch forebodings. When Hiram looked up from Tom at the gate, he saw Barbara's half-petite figure and piquant face, full as ever of force and aspiration, waiting half-way down the walk. Barbara paused there, half-way to the gate, but she could not wait even there; she came on down farther and met him, and looked in his eyes frankly and told him—with some reserve in her tone, it is true, but with real cordiality—that she was glad to see him. And by the time he reached the porch, Mother Grayson herself—kindly, old-fashioned soul that she was—stood in the door and greeted Mason with tears in her eyes.