"I think not!" John's nod was decisive. "I prefer taking this trip with just my wife."
Mary leaned back on the sofa as if swept by a sudden realization.
"I don't know what we've been thinking about. To go away and leave
Miss Gibbie like this would—"
"Make her indeed and in truth the friend of Yorkburg. To win its love she must give more than money. You have done much for her, opened her eyes to much, and she is beginning to understand. She has had a hard fight. To conquer herself, to give you up has meant—"
"Oh, John, John!" With a half-sob her hands went out to him. "For us the days ahead seem glad and beautiful. For her—To leave her, to leave my people, my little orphans, would be more than selfish. I can't, John, I can't!"
He bent over and gathered her close to his heart, laughed unsteadily in the face he lifted to his. "You have no choice, my dear. You are mine now. Forever mine!"
Chapter XXVII
A TIE THAT BINDS
Before the fire in Miss Gibbie's sitting-room Mrs. McDougal held up her left foot to the crackling coals and watched the steam curl away from the wet sole of her shoe with beaming satisfaction. Her skirt, wet around the hem, was drawn up to her knees, her coat, well sprinkled, was on the back of a chair, and in her lap her hat lay limp and spiritless.
From the once upright tail feathers of her haughtiest rooster which adorned one side of the hat, the breast of a duck adorning the other, tiny globules of water trickled slowly into the brim; and as she held it over the fender the feather yielded to circumstance and drooped dejectedly.
"Now, ain't that just like folks!" she said, holding it off and looking at it in high derision. "Look at that thing, Miss Gibbie, peart as the first crocus and proud as cuffy when the weather was good, and at the first touch of dampness or discouragement flop it goes, and no more spirit than a convict in court! It certainly is strange how many things in nature is like human beings. Now this here rooster and this here duck"—she smoothed the breast and ran her fingers down the feathers—"just naturally had no use for each other. If fowls could do what you call sniff, they sniffed, and when one took the right-hand side of the yard, the other took the left. And yet here is their remains, side by side, a decoratin' of my hat. It ain't only flowers of the field what flourish and are cut down, it's everything what stands up, specially hopes and desires, and things like that. The only thing in life we can be certain sure of is death, ain't it? But I never did feel any call to be cockin' my eye at death just because I knew it had to come. When it do come I hope there'll be grace given to meet it handsome, and go with it like I'm glad, but I ain't a-goin' to be sittin' on the doorstep lookin' out for it. I'm not hankerin' after heaven yet. There's a long time to stay there. Funny how many people is willin' to be separated from their loved ones, and how they put off joinin' of 'em as long as possible. I don't deny I'm fond of life. I just love to live!"