“Ah, Mr. Martin,” she said, “so you are awake! Was I a true prophet? Yes—I’m sure of it! Vashti’s finger-tips did steal the ache, didn’t they? They’re too clever to be safe with one’s purse. But see—have you had anything to eat? No? Why, Vashti,” in tones of quick concern, “he must be faint for want of something to eat.” She was gone in a moment. With Mabella to know a want was to endeavour to supply it. Ere there was time for further speech between Sidney and Vashti, Temperance had come out. Her shrewd, kindly face banished the last shreds of his dreams. The pearl portal closed upon the fair imageries of his imagination and he awoke, and with his first really waking thought the events of the night before ranged themselves before his mental vision. As he lay awake in the night he had decided that come what may he must put on a bold front before the awkward situation he had created for himself. But if the courage which springs from conscious righteousness is cumulative, the courage which is evolved from the necessities of a false position is self-disintegrating. Sidney felt bitterly that he feared the face of his fellows.
“Eat something,” said Temperance, urging the bread and milk upon him; “eat something. When I was took with the M’lary I never shook it off a bit till I begun to eat. It’s them citified messes that has spoiled yer stummick. Picks of this and dabs of that, and not knowin’ even if it’s home-fed pork, or pork that’s made its livin’ rootin’ in snake pastures, that you’re eatin’. My soul! It goes agin me to think of it; but there, what kin ye expect from people that eats their dinners as I’ve heard tell at six o’clock at night?”
Sidney ate his portion humbly whilst Temperance harangued him. He looked up at her, smiling in a way which transfigured his grave, thin face.
“I’m a bother to you, am I not, Miss Tribbey? But it’s my bringing up that’s responsible for my sins, I assure you. My intentions are good, and I’m sure between your cooking and your kindness I shall be a proverb for fatness before I go away.”
“Soft words butter no parsnips,” said Temperance with affected indifference. “Fair words won’t fill a flour-barrel, nor talking do you as much good as eatin’,” with which she marched off greatly delighted. Mabella seeing a chance to tease her, followed:
“If you make eyes at Mr. Martin like that I’ll tell Nathan Peck,” Sidney heard her say.
“My soul! Mabella, you’ve no sense, but, mind you, it’s true every word I said. I tell you I ain’t often in town, but when I am I eat their messes with long teeth.”
Sidney moved his camp from the porch to the hammock which was suspended between two apple trees in the corner of the garden. Mabella brought out her sewing, and Vashti her netting, and Sidney spent the remnant of the waning afternoon watching the suave movements of Vashti’s arm as, holding her work with one foot, she sent her wooden mesh dexterously into the loops of a hammock such as he was lying in; and at length the shadows lengthened on the grass, and Temperance called that supper was ready.
Mabella Lansing never forgot that repast. It was the passover partaken of whilst she was girded to go forth from girlhood to womanhood, from a paradise of ignorance to the knowledge of good and evil. The anticipation of a new love made these time-tried ones doubly dear. She forgot to eat and dwelt lingeringly upon the faces about her; faces which had shone kindly upon her since she was a little child. The time which had crept so slowly on the dial all day long now seemed to hasten on, as if to some longed-for hour which was to bring a great new blessing in its span.