But Jinny, though she had no comparative lore of love and was all the more absorbed in the absolute wonder, uniqueness and completeness of it, knew more swiftly than her lover that this was no time for dallying. In what seemed to him a mere flash of lightning the whole episode was cruelly over, he was being helped into the barge, while Bidlake was in his bedroom untying the rope, and Jinny with motherly zeal and uncanny knowledge was scrambling together his things for the night. For her, too, the moment of breaking away had been hard, and as her face moved from his, it seemed like passing from a sunny clime to a polar world. But as she now busied herself with his little equipment, the glow was back again at her heart, and the transfigured world of that magic moment was hers again.
As the wherry began to move off at last, and Frog Cottage was doubled again, Martha, who had been laid snugly inside the cart surrounded by her live stock, with blankets from the bed thrown over her, threw them off, stretched her arms to her receding farm and burst into a new passion of tears.
“Dear heart! Dear heart!” cried Caleb, almost as agitated.
“Shall we ever see our things again?” she sobbed.
“That’s nawthen to cry over, dear heart, even ef we don’t. We’ve got to thank the Lord for givin’ us the use of Frog Farm all they long years.”
But Martha sobbed on, unconsoled.
“And Will’s been taken from me too.”
“No, no, Martha,” Caleb reassured her. “There he is by the starn, smokin’ his pipe. ’Tis middlin’ clever to my thinkin’ to fill it one-handed.”
Still Martha refused to be comforted. So spasmodic were her gulpings that Nip set up a sympathetic howl and Maria a perturbed squeal. But none of these sounds—not even Ravens’ singing—could drown the celestial music Will and Jinny heard in their hearts.