The next morning Emarine arose and went about her work as usual. She had not slept. But there were no signs of relenting, or of regret, in her face. After the first surreptitious look at her, Mrs. Endey concluded that it was all settled unchangeably. Her aspiring mind climbed from a governor to a United States senator. There was nothing impossible to a girl who could break her own heart at night and go about the next morning setting her heels down the way Emarine was setting hers.
Mrs. Endey’s heart swelled with triumph.
Emarine washed the dishes and swept the kitchen. Then she went out to sweep the porch. Suddenly she paused. A storm of lyric passion had burst upon her ear; and running through it she heard the words—“Sweet—oh—Sweet—my heart is breaking!”
The girl trembled. Something stung her eyes sharply.
Then she pulled herself together stubbornly. Her face hardened. She went on sweeping with more determined care than usual.
“Well, I reckon,” she said, with a kind of fierce philosophy, “it ’u’d ’a’ been breaking a good sight worse if I’d ’a’ married him an’ that mother o’ his’n. That’s some comfort.”
But when she went in she closed the door carefully, shutting out that impassioned voice.
PART II
It was eight o’clock of a June morning. It had rained during the night. Now the air was sweet with the sunshine on the wet leaves and flowers.
Mrs. Endey was ironing. The table stood across the open window, up which a wild honey-suckle climbed, flinging out slender, green shoots, each topped with a cluster of scarlet spikes. The splendor of the year was at its height. The flowers were marching by in pomp and magnificence.