There was a shaded walk in the garden just referred to, which, from time immemorial, had been known as "the lovers' walk." True to this designation, the grass-path was, on the evening of a summer's day, trodden by two lovers, who paced up and down it side by side.
"I don't like this going away from you, Sarah dear, any better than you like it yourself," he said, in a tone half-sorrowful, half-remonstrative.
"What occasion is there for your going away then, Walter?"
She was a fair-haired, blue-eyed girl of eighteen, who asked this question. Her eyes were filled with tears as she looked up into her lover's face. It was hard to withstand such a pleading look—so Walter doubtless felt.
"You know the reason why, Sarah," he replied, tremulously; "I have told you, over and over again, that father says there are too many of us at home, eating up all the profits of his small farm, and that one of us boys ought to be getting on at something else, and earning a living for himself."
"I know all that, Walter; but there is no occasion for you to be the one. You are the oldest, and ought to be at home. And we going to be married, too; and that will have to be put off—with such a home as you know I have got! Oh, Walter, Walter, it does not seem as if you loved me much!" Saying this, the now weeping girl threw herself on a rustic seat and sobbed sadly.
What could the lover do but seat himself close by her side and speak soothing words, comforting words, encouraging words, very gently, very lovingly?
But she would not hear him.
"I know why it is; you want to be rid of me now you know that there's nothing to be got by me—that father has no money, and can't pay back what your father lent him, and it's all an excuse your going away to make more room for the rest. Why couldn't George go if somebody must—or Alfred, or James?"
"Sarah, you don't mean what you say—you can't mean what you say."