"I shall miss you dreadfully when you go!" said Donelle. It all seemed imminent and real to her now. "Of course you must go, but—well, the road will be pretty lonely until you come back." Then the girl looked up.
"I sort of feel," she said whimsically, "that I ought to be the right kind—of a girl to walk on your road, Tom Gavot."
"Well, you are."
"No, I haven't told Mamsey that I know you. I've come with Nick when Mamsey was off on the farm. She thinks I'm spinning or weaving, but I hurry through and get out. I've hoped that someone would tell her, but they haven't."
"Would she mind if she knew?" asked Tom, and his dark face reddened.
"I don't know, but I think I must think she would or I would have told. She and I talk of everything right out; everything but you."
For a moment the two walked on in silence. Then Tom spoke.
"You'd better tell her," he said. Then with a brave attempt at cheerfulness: "When I come back, Donelle, all the world can see us walking on the road and it won't matter."
"I'm going to tell Mamsey to-day," murmured Donelle. Somehow she felt as if she had wronged Tom. "This very day."
Gavot looked into her face. He suddenly felt old and detached as if he had got a long way ahead of her on the road.