"Not in words perhaps."
Amy was silent.
"He will come for you one of these days and then you will go with him."
The girl sadly shook her head, and turning her face, looked away across the fields again, where silent, patient John sturdily followed his team.
The shadow of the big sycamore was stretching across the barn lot almost to the gate, where the cows stood watching for the boy to come and let them in; a troop of droning bees were paying their last visit for the day to the peach-tree, that flung its wealth of passionate blossoms almost within reach of the porch, and over the blue distant woods the last of the feathery banks of mist hung lazily, as though tangled in the budding branches, reluctant to say good-night.
Suddenly leaving her chair, Amy threw herself on the floor and burying her face in the older woman's lap, burst into tears. Anna's own eyes were wet as she softly smoothed the brown hair of the girl she had taken to her mother's heart. "You do love him, don't you dear?"
And Amy answered, between her sobs, "Because I love him so, I must never see him again. He—he—is so strong and good and true—he must not care for one who would only bring reproach upon his name."
"I know, dear girl, and that is why you must go home; take your own place in the world again and then the way is clear."
Amy lifted her head. "Oh, if I only could—but you do not know—my going home would only widen the distance between us. My father—" She paused again, her quivering lips could not form the words.
"Amy, I am sure you are mistaken; you must be. When you meet your father it will all come right, I know."