Rilla turned her back on Infant’s several approaches, and dipped lye with a savagely noisy gourd to quench Infant’s voice. Slugs and ants in the roses, and even mildew, were no drawback at all to rose day compared to Rilla. Habits of endurance become proof armor to one’s sensibilities in the course of life, however; so Infant wandered off and absorbed the beauty of that day almost as completely as if she did so with Rilla’s approval. There was tremulous heat over the meadows. The huge and strictly tended garden was a world by itself. Beyond that stretched their orchard, having a run of clear water winding through it, all thickly tufted along the margins with mint.
Infant stepped upon the spongy lichens of the fence and rested her arms on the top rail, while she looked along the narrow country thoroughfare. The sweet green world was dear enough to be pressed in her arms. Mingled mint and rose scents were satisfying. The noble strength of their Norman colts pasturing in the stock meadow was beautiful to the eye. Infant loved to hear the pounding of those tufted feet, and to note the brilliant blackness or gray dappling of the young creatures’ coats glistening in the sun. She did not expect anything more unusual to happen on this rose day than her rebellion against Rilla and the splendor of the weather.
But who should come suddenly riding along the road, as if he had an appointment with Infant, and meant to keep it the moment she set her foot on the rail, but the Honorable Truman Condit, who many years before rode as instantaneously out of her sight! She knew him in a flash, although his hair showed gray around the ears, and much experience had added unspeakably to his personality. He was on a Condit horse, evidently riding around to look at his old neighborhood. There was a great tribe of the Condits, all well-to-do, high-headed people. The Honorable Truman had been the local bright young man of his generation. He went west, where, Infant heard, he became a Senator and did tremendous things.
She was suddenly conscious that her rose-studded braid was not wound up in a decent lump as she wore it before her class of young ladies in Sunday-school. She felt contemptible and out of her place in the human procession, although the Honorable Truman turned his horse straight into the fence corner to shake hands with her.
“Pretty nearly the same Infant Baldwin,” he remarked. “But I do see some lines on your face.”
“I suppose I’ve vegetated instead of lived all the time you have been doing so much,” said Infant.
“Oh, I haven’t been doing so much.”
“We heard you had.”
“We means Rilla and you. And you didn’t marry?”
“No,” said Infant, feeling it a stinging indignity that he should mention it, after that courtship so long ago buried. He had married, and raised a family out west. Rilla was probably right when she said one woman was the same as another to a man.