THE HOUSEWARMING
Jocelyn Brownlee was dressing for the minister's party. She was laying out the prettiest of her pretty things and sighing as she did it. For what two months before would have seemed a joyous occasion was now nothing but a painful, trying ordeal, an ordeal that must, however, be gallantly gone through with.
Ever since that afternoon when she had stood on the back porch waving joyfully to David and received no answer her world had lost its color. All the rose and gold had faded and she stood lonely and lost and cold in a mist of mystery.
She had seen David since that day, had even spoken to him. But her words were few and full of a gracious courtesy that put a whole wide world between them.
"Are you going to the minister's housewarming, Jocelyn?" David had asked painfully. He had realized the raw cruelty of that afternoon and had come over to explain and make amends.
"Yes—I'm going, David. All the town will be there, won't it?" she had answered and asked gently.
"Shall I stop for you?" begged the big boy.
"Why, no, David—thank you. I shall not need an escort. It's such a little way and I'm used to Green Valley now." But David knew just how afraid this city mouse was of the country roads at night.
She was such a gracious little body as she stood there in her garden that David wondered how he had ever for a moment doubted her and what madness in his blood had made him yield to the cruelty that had shut her heart and door to him.
For closed they were and gone was the simple, confiding girl who had picnicked with him one May day. In her place was this quiet young woman who talked to him pleasantly but did not ask him in, and who scared him with her calm and sweetness and drove the stumbling explanation from his lips.