“I will stay here all night, first,” said Dorothy, in a low, quivering voice.
“As you choose. I shall be happy as long as you are here.”
Dead silence, while the katydids seemed to keep time to their heart-beats; the fiddles began tuning for another reel, and the horses, tethered near, stretched out their necks with low, inquiring whinnies.
“Dorothy,” said Evesham softly, leaning toward her and trying to see her face in the darkness, “are you angry with me? Don't you think you deserve a little punishment for the trick you played me at the mill-head?”
“It was all thy fault for insisting.” Dorothy was too excited and angry to cry, but she was as miserable as she had ever been in her life before. “I didn't want thee to stay. People that force themselves where they are not wanted must take what they get.”
“What did you say, Dorothy?”
“I say I didn't want thee then. I do not want thee now. Thee may go back to thy fiddling and dancing. I'd rather have one of those dumb brutes for company to-night than thee, Walter Evesham.”
“Very well; the reel has begun,” said Evesham. “Fanny Jordan is waiting to dance it with me, or if she isn't she ought to be. Shall I open the gate for you?”
She passed out in silence, and the gate swung to with a heavy jar. She made good speed down the lane and then waited outside the fence till her breath came more quietly.
“Is that thee, Dorothy?” Rachel's voice called from the porch. She came out to meet her daughter and they went along the walk together. “How damp thy forehead is, child. Is the night so warm?” They sat down on the low steps and Dorothy slid her arm under her mother's and laid her soft palm against the one less soft by twenty years of toil for others. “Thee's not been long, dear; was it as much as thee expected?”