"Well, I warn't right sure," said Dennie. "No; I reckon they aren't no other reason." Seizing the shovel, he made a few more plunges with it into the soil. "Well, I'm right glad on't, Sylv. When ar' she comin'?"
"Now, I'll tell you how it is," Sylv returned, assuming an expository manner. "Deely thinks you've been a right good boy, and she allows she was impatient with you. But, then, you were impatient too. She's made up her mind to let go the rest of her school term, and she's waiting for you now up at the city. All you've got to do is to go there and get her."
Dennie abandoned his work for the moment, and gazed at his brother affectionately. "Thank ye kindly, Sylv. Ye been a good brother to me. Oh, it don't 'pear true! I don't make out how it's so; but I waited and sarved kind o'patient, Sylv, and all to once it comes out squar'. Deely's been fair to me, old man, and so ha' you been. Wall, it's more'n I desarve."
With the guilty knowledge of a hidden love for Adela in his heart, Sylv would rather have faced the threatening muzzle of his brother's gun, as it had once been pointed at him, than to have stood up before the glance of trust and affection which Dennie now directed toward him. But, thank Heaven, his conscience was clean. He had not betrayed the trust. He had preserved his honor, and had left Adela free.
"Don't think about what you deserve," he said, "but just you go and do what she expects you to. You go up there and fetch her back."
"Did she ask ye to tell me that, Sylv?"
"Yes."
"Then I'll do it! But I ar' got to dig this hyar ditch first off, don't you see I have? 'Cause I tole aunty I would, and she'd be a heap sight put out if I didn't. But ye'll go up to the city with me, won't ye, Sylv? I'd feel lonesome and quar' ef ye didn't."
"I'm right sorry, Dennie; but I can't. I've got to do some work for Mr. Lance, and I ought not to go back."
However, when Dennie was ready to take his departure Sylv came to him with a sealed letter. "I can't go with you, Dennie," he repeated; "but there's a few words I wanted to say to Deely, and you might as well carry them, I thought."