“We’re going to look fine,” laughed Beth. “Adee and I have a plan. We’ll not tell you. We’ll keep it as a state secret until we burst upon you in all our glory. You’ll be overcome. I know you’ll say that we look fine.”
“I’ll believe that you do; but I’ll not be at Shintown to see you. I’m going away tomorrow. The boards will go up on the log house again for—I cannot say how long.”
“Going to leave?” Eliza was foolish enough to feel a strange sinking of the heart.
“Isn’t this departure rather unexpected?”
“I always take to the woods and roads when fair weather sets in. I should have gone weeks ago. Now some of my old friends have warned me that the time has come to cut loose and show a good pair of heels. You see, Miss Eliza, not even a year of happy domesticity can make me break old habits. I’m starting out to visit old places. New cities have no attraction for me. By daylight, I’ll be off.”
He took up his milk-jug and was off. He had not even said good-bye or thanked Eliza for the little kindnesses she had shown him. Yet she felt herself his debtor. He had given her life a new impulse. He had opened a new line of work. Her pen would help her provide for her own old age and educate Beth. More than that, she found joy in expressing herself. She had gone from the beaten path, and had found the glorious possibilities which lay within her own soul, just as they lie in the soul of each one; though some are never discovered.
When Eliza and Beth went down the slope the following day, neither song nor whistling was heard from the Oliver log house. The windows and door had been boarded up. Already the place had an appearance of being abandoned.
“It makes me feel queer—sort of lonesome,” said Beth. “I wonder if we’ll ever see him again. I thought he was very nice, Adee. I think I never met any other man that I liked quite so well. I wish he had not gone. I wish he would come back and live here forever. We’ll miss him dreadfully. Don’t you wish he’d come back to live here always, Adee?”
Eliza had stopped to pluck a flower and had nothing at all to say. During the walk to town, Beth did all the talking.
The time until the reception did pass. To Beth it dragged. It was as though the little god Time had hung leaden balls on his feet. Beth counted the nights between. They passed at last. The evening of the Woman’s Club reception was at hand. Adee had yielded to Beth and bought a soft white gown of embroidered mull. It was just a little low at the neck and the sleeves ended in soft lace frills, just at the elbow. Best of all to Beth’s way of thinking, there was a little sweep to it. The ruffles of val lace floated about Eliza’s feet. Beth had put up her hair so that it was loose about the forehead and in a great coil like a crown upon her head. A pink rose finished it, to Beth’s satisfaction.