“She's got a surprise for you,” said Mrs. Crane, smiling mysteriously. “She's been fixing for you for an hour. My! but she's pretty in them new clothes—why, June!”
June was coming in—she wore her homespun, her scarlet homespun and the Psyche knot. She did not seem to have heard Mrs. Crane's note of wonder, and she sat quietly down in her seat. Her face was pale and she did not look at Hale. Nothing was said of Dave—in fact, June said nothing at all, and Hale, too, vaguely understanding, kept quiet. Only when he went out, Hale called her to the gate and put one hand on her head.
“I'm sorry, little girl.”
The girl lifted her great troubled eyes to him, but no word passed her lips, and Hale helplessly left her.
June did not cry that night. She sat by the window—wretched and tearless. She had taken sides with “furriners” against her own people. That was why, instinctively, she had put on her old homespun with a vague purpose of reparation to them. She knew the story Dave would take back home—the bitter anger that his people and hers would feel at the outrage done him—anger against the town, the Guard, against Hale because he was a part of both and even against her. Dave was merely drunk, he had simply shot off his pistol—that was no harm in the hills. And yet everybody had dashed toward him as though he had stolen something—even Hale. Yes, even that boy with the cap who had stood up for her at school that afternoon—he had rushed up, his face aflame with excitement, eager to take part should Dave resist. She had cried out impulsively to save Hale, but Dave would not understand. No, in his eyes she had been false to family and friends—to the clan—she had sided with “furriners.” What would her father say? Perhaps she'd better go home next day—perhaps for good—for there was a deep unrest within her that she could not fathom, a premonition that she was at the parting of the ways, a vague fear of the shadows that hung about the strange new path on which her feet were set. The old mill creaked in the moonlight below her. Sometimes, when the wind blew up Lonesome Cove, she could hear Uncle Billy's wheel creaking just that way. A sudden pang of homesickness choked her, but she did not cry. Yes, she would go home next day. She blew out the light and undressed in the dark as she did at home and went to bed. And that night the little night-gown lay apart from her in the drawer—unfolded and untouched.
XIV
But June did not go home. Hale anticipated that resolution of hers and forestalled it by being on hand for breakfast and taking June over to the porch of his little office. There he tried to explain to her that they were trying to build a town and must have law and order; that they must have no personal feeling for or against anybody and must treat everybody exactly alike—no other course was fair—and though June could not quite understand, she trusted him and she said she would keep on at school until her father came for her.
“Do you think he will come, June?”
The little girl hesitated.