“In novels, and poetry, and sometimes in real life, beautiful young women are fallen in love with, and then trouble is liable to begin,” explained Tom with amiable gravity.
“There is no one to fall in love with me at the Cross-roads,” said Sheba, sweetly. “I wish there was.”
“Good Lord,” exclaimed Tom, devoutly. “Come along to church, Sheba, and let’s go in for fasting and prayer.”
He took her to the “preaching” in the log cabin and noticed the effect of her entry on the congregation as they went in. There were a number of more or less awkward and raw-boned young male creatures whose lives were spent chiefly in cornfields and potato patches. They were uncomely hewers of wood and drawers of water, but they turned their heads to look at her, and their eyes followed her as she went to her seat. When she had sat down, those who could catch glimpses of her involuntarily craned their necks and sat in discomfort until the sermon was over. Tom recognised this fact, and in secret reflected upon it in all its bearings.
“Yes,” he found himself saying, mentally; “I’d like to know how I’m going to do my duty by this. I don’t believe there’s a derned thing about it in ‘Advice to Young Mothers.’”
The day wore on to its lovely end, and lost itself in one of the sunsets which seem to flood the sky with a tide of ripples of melted gold, here and there tipped with flame. When this was over, a clear, fair moon hung lighted in the heavens, and, flooding with silver what had been flooded with gold, changed the flame-tips to pearl.
Sheba strayed in the garden among the flowers. Tom, sitting under the vines of the porch, watched her white figure straying in and out among the shrubbery. At last he saw her standing on the grass in the full radiance of the moonlight, her hands hanging clasped behind her and her face turned upward to the sky. As she had wandered about, she had done a fanciful thing. She had made a wreath of white narcissus and laid it on her hair, and she had twisted together a sort of long garland of the same blossoms and cast it loosely round her waist.
“She never did that before,” Tom said, as he watched her. “Good Lord! what a picture she is, standing there with her face lifted. I wonder what she’s thinking of.”
“Uncle Tom,” she said, when she sauntered back to him, “does the moonlight make you feel sad without being unhappy at all? That is what it does to me.”
“It’s the spring, Sheba,” he said, as he had said it in the morning; “it’s the spring.”