They stood on the orchard hill one Sunday afternoon at the pause of the year. Buds were swelling and the edges of the woods wore a soft blush against the vaporous sky. The bare brown slopes were streaked with snow. A floe of winter ice, grinding upon itself with the tide, glared yellow as an old man's teeth in the setting sun. From across the river came the thunder of a train, bound north, two engines dragging forty cars of freight piled up by some recent traffic-jam; it plunged into a tunnel, and they waited, listening to the monster's smothered roar. Out it burst, its breath packed into clouds, the engines whooped, and round the curve where a point of cedars cut the sky the huge creature unwound itself, the hills echoing to its tread.
Emmy watched it out of sight, and breathed again. “Hundreds, hundreds going every day! It seems easy enough for everybody else. Oh, if I were a man!”
“What do you want I should do, Emmy?” Adam knew well what man she was thinking of.
“I want? Don't you ever want things yourself?”
“When I want a thing bad, I gen'ly think it's worth waiting for.”
“People don't get things by waiting. I don't know how you can stand it,—to stay here year after year. And now you've tied yourself up with a promise, and you know you cannot keep it!”
“I'm trying to keep it.”
“You couldn't keep it if you cared—really and truly—as some do!” She dropped her voice hurriedly. “To live here and eat your meals day after day and pass me like a stick or a stone!”
The slow blood burned in Adam's face and hammered in his pulses. His blue eyes were bashful through its heat. “I don't feel like a stick nor a stone. You know it, Emmy. You want to be careful,” he added gently. “Would going away look as if I cared?”
“Why—why don't you ask me to go with you?” The girl tried to meet his eyes. She turned off her question with a proud laugh.