“And so he ought to be, remembering all things,” said Temperance. “Poor Len—well, when he was keepin’ company with Martha Didymus I thought he was the only young fellar I ever saw that could hold a candle to Lanty. Well, well, and Martha’s been dead and gone these three years. Pore Mart, died of heart-break, I always said, and so Len’s dead in Bosting! What was he doin’ there?”
“They say,” said Nathan, telling the tidings shamefacedly, as became their import. “They say he was play actin’.”
“Oh, pore Len,” said Temperance. “To fall to that! And I’ve heard many a one say that there never was a man far or near could draw as straight a furrow as Len nor build a better stack. Play actin’!”
Just then Mr. Lansing came out to the kitchen.
“It’s most time to start,” he said. “We’ll take the democrat—comin’ to help hook up, Nat?”
Nathan followed him to the stables.
Temperance went to get ready for the prayer-meeting for rain.
The two girls and Sidney were sitting on the grass in the sweet, old-fashioned garden, where verbenas elbowed sweet clover, and sweet peas climbed over and weighed down the homely Provence roses, where mignonette grew self-sown in the sandy paths and marigolds lifted saucy faces to the sun unbidden; where in one corner grew marjoram and thyme and peppergrass, lemon balm, spearmint and rue. The far-away parents of these plants had shed their seed in old grange gardens in England. The Lansings had long ago left their country for conscience sake, bravely making the bitter choice between Faith and Fatherland.
The three young people, waiting in the delicious drowsiness of the summer twilight, were environed in an atmosphere of suppressed but electrical emotion.
Sidney Martin felt within him all the eagerness of first love. Every faculty of his delicate, emotional temperament was tense with the delight of the Vision given to his eyes. How could he ever dream that the moths of the mind would fray its fabric or the sharp teeth of disillusion tear it? And indeed for him it remained for ever splendid with the golden broideries of his loving imagination. Vashti dreamed—even as the mighty sibyls of old brooded over their dreams, conscious of their beauty, and filled with the desire to see them accomplished—finding her visions trebly precious because they were her very own, the offspring of her own heart, the begetting of her own brain, the desire of her own will.