"You may do what you like, Mr. Mason," said the old lady, pleased with his familiarity; "but peelin' apples ain't jest the kind of work to set a schoolmaster at."
"Schoolmasters a'n't all of them so good for nothing as you think. Come on, Barbara, a little apple-peeling will make it seem like home to me; and this living 'round in other people's houses has made me homesick."
Barbara came out and took her old place on the loom-bench, beside the great three-peck basket of yellow apples. Her seat raised her considerably higher than Mason, who occupied a low chair. In front of Barbara was another chair, on which sat a pan to hold the quarters of apples when prepared for drying; on one of the rungs of this Barbara supported her feet. The candle which Mrs. Grayson lighted shed a dim yellow light from one end of the high smoke-blackened mantel-shelf, which extended across the chimney above the cavernous kitchen fire-place. The joists of the loft were of heavy logs, and these, and the boards which overlaid them, and all the woodwork about this kitchen, were softened and sombered by the smoke that had escaped from the great, rude chimney; for the kitchen was the original log-cabin built when Tom's father, fresh from Maryland, had first settled on the new farm; the rest of the house had grown from this kernel.
The mother, who had not dreamed of any relation between Barbara and Hiram Mason more friendly than that of master and pupil, was a little surprised at the apparently advanced stage of their acquaintance; but she liked it, because it showed that the schoolmaster was not "stuck up," and that he understood that "our Barb'ry" was no common girl. Tom looked in at the open outside door of the kitchen after a while, and was pleased. "Barb deserved a nice beau if ever anybody did," he reflected, and it might keep her from feeling so bad over his own failures. Not wishing to intrude, and wearied to exhaustion with his first day of farm-work since his return, he went around to the front door and through the sitting-room upstairs to bed. When the mother had finished "putting things to rights" she went into the sitting-room, and the apple-peelers were left with only the loom, the reel, and the winding-blades for witnesses.
They talked of school, of their studies, and of many other things until the great basket of apples began to grow empty while the basket of parings and corings was full. The pan of apple-quarters having overflowed had been replaced by a pail, which was also nearly full, when, after a playful scuffle of hands in the basket, Hiram secured the last apple and peeled it. Then laying down his knife, he asked:
"You'll be back at school next week?"
Barbara had been dreading this inquiry. She wished Mason had not asked it. She had heartily enjoyed his society while they talked of things indifferent, but the question brought her suddenly and painfully back into the region of her disappointment and perplexities.
"I'm afraid I can't come any more. Things haven't gone right with us." The wide spaces between her words indicated to her companion the effort it cost to allude to her affairs.
Mason was more than ever puzzled. By what means could he establish such a ground of confidence between them as would enable him to enter into her difficulties and give her, at the least, the help of his sympathy and counsel? There seemed no way so good as that by direct approach.
"Barbara," he said, drawing his chair nearer to the loom-bench and leaning forward toward her, "won't you please tell me about your affairs, if—if you can do it? I don't want to intrude, but why can't you let me be your best friend and—help you if I can?"