"Not for a day or two," owned the young man reluctantly, as he stood, his hand still on the wheel; "there's the ploughing for spring wheat."
"It's time that was done!"
"But I have had so much else."
"Yes, yes." Starlight was twisting restlessly across the drive from one side to the other. "Good night, we've enjoyed it immensely."
"Good night!" called the women, and they left him there in the circling drive, the great empty house looming behind him, a light in one window—the window of his own room. He went up the wide, high steps slowly. The evening had not been all he dreamed it might be, nor had it been a failure; and they were coming again. She had said she wished it.
He threw himself into the chair the professor had lounged in and began to live over again the hours of her visit, leaving out the bitter and hugging to his memory the sweet. He recalled her supple figure, her gay words as they wandered about the old place; he remembered their tour of the house and reddened at the thought of his rudeness. It was only a careless speech, she could not have known how it jarred upon other deeper feelings. He recalled with a wave of tenderness, the subdued young woman of the evening, and smiled at the memory; it was a mood he had never seen before, and it won upon his heart; and dwelling on the thought of it, he began once more to dream what the old house would be were it full of life, to plan what could be done here and there, without and within, for cheer and comfort and beautiful living.
It would be several days he had said, before he could come to town again; it was ten. The Sabbath had been promised to a neighbor back in the country. The ploughing took longer than he thought. A field which had been allowed to run to waste must be burned over; and while the weather held fair and windless, the undergrowth encroaching from the woodland must be cut and burned. The fodder was not yet stacked, and all the work was pressing upon him. Good hard work in the clear, pure air, sound sleep, and contented thoughts made the days speed by.
When the Sabbath, his holiday, came again, he was abroad in the red frosty dawn, hurrying from stable to breakfast and away. When he rode into town he still had time to go up to the University before the service. He left his horse at the stable and hastened up Main street. The town was yet quiet. On the bridge above the railroad he paused a second looking down at the station below. A train was pulling out. The shriek of the locomotive echoed shrilly among the hills, the smoke hung in billowy clouds close about the smoke-stack, and the tops of the coaches gliding away were white and glistering with frost. Edward had a comfortable feeling of home and cheer as, standing there, he looked down and beyond on spires and housetops and chimney-tops smoke-wreathed; but as he turned to hasten on, he saw, coming slowly along the platform, the professor. Edward hurried back to the flight of steps sunk in the hillside.
The very look of Mr. Holloway gave him a feeling of dismay. His coat collar was turned high about his face, and the pallor of his clear white skin, bitten into purple and red by the chill of the morning, showed clearly framed against it and by his thick black hair streaked with gray. His dark eyes looked solemnly thoughtful. He had an air altogether desolate and distraught. Edward called to him. He started, looked up, and brightened wonderfully.
"Ah! I am glad to see you." He had reached the head of the stairway. "Frances," he added dolefully, "has gone away; I have just been to see her off."