"Oh, Arabella, dear! No! no! You look young and as pretty as a picture!" she exclaimed, truthfully. "But, Arabella"—her brow puckered worriedly—"if no one knows, how are you going to do it?"
"I'm going to write and tell him to come for me, and never let on to any one, an' we'll—we'll—what do you call it when they run away?"
"Not elope, Arabella!" cried Elsie in dismay.
"Yes, that's it. We'll elope," said Miss Arabella calmly.
The girl looked at her, and for an instant the vision of the shy, drooping little woman figuring in a runaway match filled her with a desire for laughter. But it was quenched the next instant by the gravity of the situation. What did Elsie know of this man, after all? What if the innocent little child-woman were being deceived! That feeling she often experienced, of being far older than Arabella, took possession of her.
"Arabella," she said gravely, but gently, "are you quite, quite sure that he is kind, and—and—good, and all you could wish him to be?"
Miss Arabella looked at her in childlike wonder, and then her face lit up with a heavy smile. "Oh, my! there's no fear of him!" she cried radiantly.
Elsie was silent. She dared not disturb her beautiful faith. "But, Arabella," she pleaded, "even if you told Susan and Bella and all, when he came they would have to let you marry him. And I think it would be better, much better, than to elope. It looks as though you were doing something wrong—and you're not."
Miss Arabella's head drooped again. She nervously fingered a corner of the blue silk. "It ain't exactly that," she said shyly, "but I kind of feel scared about it, Elsie." Her voice sank to a whisper. "You see, I've got so used to bein' disappointed that I guess I can't stand anything else for a while," she added, with unconscious pathos. "And I ain't dead sure that it'll happen, you know. It seems as if it was too good to be true, and if it didn't"—her face looked suddenly old and gray—"Susan and William and Ella Anne, an' all the folks, would talk and talk." She shivered. "I can't stand to be talked about, Elsie. It was just because I was so scared o' bein' talked about that I got better last fall. And, oh, I want you to make Ella Anne keep still about my letter, won't you, Elsie, please? And you'll not tell, will you?"
"No, Arabella, not a soul." She sighed in perplexity. To assist in an elopement! The staid, earnest upbringing of the country girl, coupled with her high sense of duty, made her shrink from the very word.