Alvin Koehler would have had no objection to a scrutiny of his soul. To Alvin, all of himself was interesting.
Alvin did not think often of his father. By this time William was trusted to work in the almshouse fields, and was allowed to talk from morning till night of his wrongs.
Early in September Alvin went away. He came on the last Saturday evening to say good-bye to Katy and they sat together on the dusky porch. The porch was darker than it had been in the springtime, since the hand which usually pruned the vines was no longer able to hold the shears. There were still a few sprays of bloom on the honeysuckle and the garden was in its greatest glory. There bloomed scarlet sage and crimson cock's-comb and another more brilliant, leafy plant, red from root to tip. Among the stalks of the spring flowers twined now nasturtiums and petunias, and there was sweet alyssum and sweet William and great masses of cosmos and asters. In the moonlight Katy could see a plant move gently; even in her sadness she could not resist a spasm of pleasure as a rabbit darted out from behind it. On the brick wall between the porch and the garden stood Grandmother Gaumer's thorny, twisted night-blooming cactus with great swollen buds ready to open to-morrow evening. The air had changed; it was no longer soft and warm as it had been the night when Katy first planned to educate Alvin.
Sitting by her grandmother's bed Katy had finished her red dress with the ruffles. It had been necessary to make the hem an inch longer than they had planned in the spring. Grandmother Gaumer's patient eyes had seemed to smile when Katy showed her. Grandmother Gaumer was shown everything; to her bedside Bevy bore proudly Katy's first successful baking of bread; thither to-morrow, Uncle Edwin would carry the great cactus in its heavy tub.
Katy sat for a long time on the step before Alvin came. Her body softened and weakened a dozen times as she thought she heard his step, then her muscles stiffened and her hands clenched as the step passed by. Presently it would be time for Bevy to go home and for Katy to go into the house, or presently some one would come, and then her chance to see Alvin would be gone. It seemed to her that Bevy looked at her with suspicion when Alvin's name was mentioned; the later it grew the more likely Bevy was to interrupt their interview.
The grip of Katy's hands, one upon the other, grew tighter, her cheeks hotter, the beating of her heart more rapid. He must come; it was incredible that he could stay away. Her throat tightened; she said over and over to herself, "Oh, come! come! come!"
Presently down the dusky street approached Alvin with his swinging walk. Now Katy knew at last that she was not mistaken. He was here; he was entering the gate which she had opened so that its loud creak might not be heard by Bevy; he was walking softly on the grass as Katy had advised him.
Alvin sat down a little closer to Katy than was his custom. A subtle change had come over him. Though the Millerstown boys looked at him with scorn, the Millerstown girls, smiling upon him, had completed the work which Katy's attentions had begun. Alvin had not attended Sunday School picnics, with their games of Copenhagen and their long walks home in the twilight, for nothing. Alvin had less and less desire for learning; he still thought of education as a path to even finer clothes than he had and greater admiration and entire ease. He had come now from service at the Lutheran church, and from his favorite corner he had been conscious of the notice of the congregation. He had asked Katy for twenty-five dollars more than she had given him; this, Katy told him, lay now in the putlock hole in the house wall. His spirits rose still more gayly as he heard of it.
"I will pay it back in a year or two," he assured Katy lightly. "Then I will tell you how to do when you go to school."
"Yes," said Katy. She would have liked to say, "Oh, Alvin, keep it, keep it forever!" But how then should she attain to an equality with Alvin? She realized now fully that he was going away. The long, long winter was fast approaching, and she would be here alone in this changed house. There would be no more entertainments; there would be no more frantic racing with Whiskey; there would be no more glorifying, sustaining hope.