"I am serious!"
Mrs. Falconer did not take Amy's word: she searched her face and eyes with one swift scrutiny that was like a merciless white flame of truth, scorching away all sham, all play, all unreality. Then she dropped her head quickly, so that her own face remained hidden, and silently plied her work. But how the very earth about the rake, how the little roots and clods, seemed to come to life and leap joyously into the air! All at once she dropped everything and came over and took Amy's hand and kissed her cheek. Her lovely eyes were glowing; her face looked as though it had upon it the rosy shadow of the peach trees not far away.
"I do congratulate you," she said sweetly, but with the reserve which Amy's accession to womanhood and the entire conversation of the morning made an unalterable barrier to her. "You have not needed advice: you have chosen wisely. You shall have a beautiful wedding. I will make your dress myself. The like of it will never have been seen in the wilderness. You shall have all the finest linen in the weaving-room. Only a month! How shall we ever get ready!—if we stand idling here! Oh, the work, the work!" she cried and turned to hers with a dismissing smile—unable to trust herself to say more.
"And I must go and take the things out of my bundle," cried Amy, catching the contagion of all this and bounding away to the house. Some five minutes later Mrs. Falconer glanced at the sun: it was eleven o'clock—time to be getting dinner.
When she reached her room, Amy was standing beside the bed, engaged in lifting out of the bundle the finery now so redolent of the ball. "Aunt Jessica," she remarked carelessly, without looking round, "I forgot to tell you that John Gray had a fight with a panther in his schoolroom this morning," and she gave several gossamer-like touches to the white lace tucker. Mrs. Falconer had seated herself in a chair to rest. She had taken off her bonnet, and her fingers were unconsciously busy with the lustrous edges of her heavy hair. At Amy's words her hands fell to her lap. But she had long ago learned the value of silence and self-control when she was most deeply moved: Amy had already surprised her once that morning.
"The panther bit him in the shoulder close to the neck," continued Amy, folding the tucker away and lifting out the blue silk coat. "They were on the floor of the school-house in the last struggle when Erskine got there. He had gone for Phoebe Lovejoy's cows, because it was raining and she couldn't go herself; and he heard John as he was passing. He said his voice sounded like the bellow of a dying bull." "Is he much hurt? Where is he? Did you go to see him? ho dressed his wound? Who is with him?"
"They carried him home," said Amy, turning round to the light and pressing the beautiful silk coat in against her figure with little kicks at the skirt. "No; I didn't go; Joseph came round and told me. He didn't think the wound was very dangerous—necessarily. One of his hands was terribly clawed."
"A panther? In town? In his schoolroom?"—
"You know Erskine keeps a pet panther. I heard him tell Mrs. Poythress it was a female," said Amy with an apologetic icy, knowing little laugh. "And he said this one had been prowling about in the edge of the canebrakes for several days. He had been trying to get a shot at it. He says it was nearly starved: that was why it wanted to eat John whole before breakfast."
Amy turned back to the bed and shook out delicately the white muslin dress—the dress that John had hung on the wall of his cabin—that had wound itself around his figure so clingingly.