“I made up my mind to it as long ago as I can remember,” Jerome answered back, yet scarcely with bitterness, for the very music which his uncle denied was too loud in his ears for him to disbelieve it.
When Jerome was returning from Dale, an hour later, his back bent beneath great sheaves of newly cut shoes, like a harvester's with wheat, he heard a hollow echo of hoofs in the road ahead, then presently a cloud of dust arose like smoke, and out of it came two riders: Lawrence Prescott, on a fine black horse—which his father used seldom for driving, he was so unsuited for standing patiently at the doors of affliction, yet kept through a latent fondness for good horse-flesh—and Lucina Merritt, on his pretty bay mare. Lucina galloped past at Lawrence's side, with an eddying puff of blue riding-skirt and a toss of yellow curls and blue plumes. Jerome stood back a little to give them space, and the dust settled slowly over him after they were by. Then he went on his way, with his heart beating hard, yet with no feeling of jealousy against Lawrence Prescott. He even thought that it would be a good match. Still, he was curiously disturbed, not by the reflection that he was laden with sheaves of leather—he would have been more ashamed had he been seen idling on a work-day—but because he feared he looked so untidy with the dust of the road on his shoes. She might have noticed his clothes, although she had galloped by so fast.
The first thing Jerome did, when he reached home, was to brush and blacken his shoes, though there was no chance of Lucina's seeing them. He felt as if he ought not to think of her when he had on dusty shoes.
The greater part of the next day Jerome passed, as usual, soling shoes in Ozias Lamb's shop. When he came home to supper, he noticed something unusual about his mother and sister. They had the appearance of being strung tightly with repressed excitement, like some delicate musical instruments. To look at or to speak to them was to produce in them sensitive vibrations which seemed out of proportion to the cause.
Jerome asked no questions. These disturbances in the feminine current always produced a corresponding stiffness of calm in his masculine one, as if by an instinct to maintain the equilibrium of dangerous forces for the safety of the household.
Elmira and her mother kept looking at each other and at him, pulses starting up in their delicate cheeks, flushes coming and going, motioning each other with furtive gestures to speak, then countermanding the order with sharp negatory shakes of the head.
At last Mrs. Edwards called back Jerome as he was going to his chamber, books under arm and lighted candle in hand.
“Look here,” said she; “I want to show you something.”
Jerome turned. Elmira was extending towards him a nicely folded letter, with a little green seal on it.
“What is it?” asked Jerome.