"Perhaps it would be the best thing for us both," Then, seeing his panic-stricken face, she added more kindly, "Hannibal, our money is getting low, and the garden is our only chance."
After that he worked patiently without a word and without a thought of sparing himself.
Edith insisted on the closest economy in the house, though she was too sensible to stint herself in food in view of her constant toil. But one day she detected Mrs. Allen, with her small cunning and her determination to carry her point, practicing a little wastefulness. Edith turned on her with such fierceness that she never dared to repeat the act. Indeed, Edith was becoming very much what she was before Zell ran away, only in addition there was something akin, at times, to Zell's own hardness and recklessness, and one day she said to Edith:
"What is the matter? You are becoming like me."
Edith fled to her room, and sobbed and cried and tried to pray till her strength was gone. The sweet trust and peace she had once enjoyed seemed like a past dream. She was learning by bitter experience that it can never be right to do wrong; and that a first false step, like a false premise, leads to sad conclusions.
She had insisted that her mother should not speak of the matter till it became absolutely necessary, therefore Laura, Zell, and none of her friends could understand her.
Arden was the most puzzled and pained of all, for she shrank from him with increasing dread. He was now back at his farm work, though he said to Edith one day despondently that he had no heart to work, for the mortgage on their place would probably be foreclosed in the fall. She longed to tell him how she was situated, but she saw he was unable to help her, and she dreaded to see the scorn come into his trusting, loving eyes; she could not endure his absolute confidence in her, and in his presence her heart ached as if it would break, so she shunned him till he grew very unhappy, and sighed:
"There's something wrong. She finds I am not congenial. I shall lose her friendship," and his aching heart also admitted, as never before, how dear it was to him.
Nature was awakening with the rapture of another spring; birds were coming back to old haunts with ecstatic songs; flowers budding into their brief but exquisite life, and the trees aglow with fragrant prophecies of fruit; but a winter of fear and doubt was chilling these two hearts into something far worse than nature's seeming death.