When she had finished, people from somewhere applauded, the band added its contribution to the clamour, but the mothers sitting down in the shadows, with their boys back in the lines standing rigid and weary at attention, were strangely silent. The speaker gathered her draperies about her, a little elf of a girl handed her a sheaf of roses, and in the general stir which followed, a few of the women from the farms got up a bit stiffly—they were not used to sitting so long at a time—and looked about for their men to go home. It was in the press of the spring work and they hadn’t had time to do the milking before they came.
Billy was there, and he had listened with all his logical faculties active. When she finished he began to move towards the gate; it was his last leave and he had plans for the next day which meant a great deal to him. There was more than enough time to catch the car to the city, but he just naturally found himself going. The band had taken a stand close to the pavilion and was starting up a waltz, and, well—it was too much like pouring honey into a cup of hemlock.
At the edge of the crowd he suddenly found Marjorie right in his path, but looking the other way.
“Oh,” she gasped, “you frightened me.”
He didn’t apologize, because he knew he hadn’t frightened her. “I was just getting off to catch the car,” he explained.
Miss Evison was disappointed. She had pointed out the good-looking soldier to a few of her girl friends, with a mysterious half-promise of a story, later. She had counted on this evening for days, and had rehearsed several delicate little speeches and a touching, but very proper, farewell. She hadn’t anticipated being confronted with a new man. It would have been highly satisfactory if he had shown a sign of the end-of-everything bitterness, generally supposed to be appropriate under the circumstances, but this cool, friendly indifference was more than any girl could stand from a man who had proposed to her not six months before. He was holding out his hand and saying:
“I may not see you again before I go.”
She softened at once.
“You’re not going yet,” she coaxed. “I simply can’t let you go yet,” and when he showed no sign of staying, she added rather sharply, “I don’t believe I ever knew you to be in such a hurry before.”
He smiled kindly and happily as one might over an episode of childhood.