David read it with frowning brows.
“There’s nothing in this,” he said impatiently, “to show you who the person is, nor when you’ll be called for.”
“No,” Barbara agreed faintly. “But you see——”
“It’s some mean dog-in-the-manger, who is watching you in secret, and——”
He stopped short.
“The boy is coming,” he said, and got to his feet.
“You’ll stay to dinner?” she begged him timidly. “I made cherry pies this morning. I think”—humbly—“that they’re that they’re very good.”
David put his arm around her, with a sudden untraced impulse of tenderness.
“Don’t worry about the letter,” he said magnificently. “I’ll—think it over.”
It was a very happy meal they ate together, in spite of the prying presence of Miss Cottle, who had assumed control of the teapot. There was stewed chicken, an abundance of fresh vegetables, strawberries and yellow cream, and, to top off with, the cherry pie of such unexampled excellence that David forgot the unpleasant doubts which had assailed him in the morning. As he sat, smoking a cigarette, on the shaded porch at the conclusion of the meal, it occurred to him that the farm was not, after all, so bad a place to live. His eyes wandered dreamily across the broad fields to the blue distance, and lingered there unseeingly.