"The first and last and only one, my darling."
"Judy Hatch would suit you better if she wasn't in love with the rector."
"Confound Judy Hatch! I'll stop your mouth with kisses if you mention her again."
At this she clung to him, laughing and crying in a sudden passion of fear.
"Hold me fast, Abel, and don't let me go, whatever happens," she said.
When he had parted from her at the fence which divided his land from Gay's near the Poplar Spring, he watched her little figure climb the Haunt's Walk and then disappear into the leafless shrubbery at the back of the house. While he looked after her it seemed to him that the wan November day grew radiant with colour, and that spring blossomed suddenly, out of season, upon the landscape. His hour was upon him when he turned and retraced his steps over the silver brook and up the gradual slope, where the sun shone on the bare soil and revealed each separate clod of earth as if it were seen under a microscope. All nature was at one with him. He felt the flowing of his blood so joyously that he wondered why the sap did not rise and mount upward in the trees.
In the yard Sarah was directing a negro boy, who was spreading a second layer of manure over her more delicate plants. As Abel closed the gate, she looked up, and the expression of his face held her eyes while he came toward her.
"What has happened, Abel? You look like Moses when he came down from the mountain."
"It was all wrong—what I told you last night, mother. Molly is going to marry me."
"You mean she's gone an' changed her mind jest as you'd begun to git along without her. I declar', I don't know what has got into you to show so little sperit. If you were the man I took you to be, you'd up an' let her see quick enough that you don't ax twice in the same quarter."