She leaned towards him, her face filled with delight. “Hezekiah Wilkins,” she whispered excitedly, “I could hug you for those words.”
“I’ve been waiting a good many years for you to do that, Mary.”
She dropped her head. “It’s the moon, Hezekiah,” she warned him. “I forgot how to embrace any one years ago.”
In the mysterious light, it seemed to him that a smile played about her mouth. His arm slipped about her waist. He tipped her chin gently and looked down into the face which for so long had meant to him the one woman. “Is it true, Mary? You’ll marry me?”
A stray cloud passed in front of the moon, and when it passed, the beams lighted the porch of Aunt Kate’s house at Old Rock.
The door opened and Obadiah came out, while his sister drew a shawl closer to her shoulders and waited in the doorway. “It’s a beautiful night,” she said, “a perfect Fall night.”
“It’s chilly–it’s really cold,” he objected, shrugging his shoulders. He walked to the end of the porch and looked towards the apple tree where the hammock swung in lonesomeness. “Where is Virginia?” he asked.
“She went walking with Joe.”
“She’ll freeze,” he worried.
Humor glinted in Aunt Kate’s eyes. “Girls take moonlight walks on the coldest winter nights and I never heard of one freezing, Obadiah. Your blood is thin. Come in and I’ll build a fire of chips for you.”