“I wonder he hain’t married afore this. He must be as much as twenty-five or six years old, and so han’ some too!”
“He has been married,” and the little face of the speaker did not move a muscle.
“Now you don’t say it,” returned Ben. “A widower, hey? How long sence he was married?”
“A few months,” and the long eye-lashes quivered in the firelight just a little.
“I want to know—died so soon—poor critter. Tell me about her, dew. You didn’t know her long, so I s’pose you couldn’t love her a great sight?”
The brown eyes flashed up into Ben’s face, and the blood rushed to Alice’s cheek, as she replied “Me not love Marian! Oh, I loved her so much!”
The right chord was touched at last, and in her own way Alice told the sad story—how Marian had left them on her bridal night, and though they searched for her everywhere, both in the river and through the country, no trace of her could be found, and the conviction was forced upon them that she was dead.
“Je-ru-sa-lem! I never thought of that!” was Ben’s involuntary exclamation; but it conveyed no meaning to Alice, and when he asked if they still believed her dead, she answered:
“I don’t quite believe Frederic does. I don’t, any way. I used to, though, but now it seems just like she would come back,” and turning her face more fully toward him, Alice told how she had loved the lost one, and how each day she prayed that she might come home to them again.
“I don’t know as she was pretty,” she said, “but she was so sweet, so good, and I’m so lonesome without her,” and down Alice’s cheeks the big tears rolled, while Ben’s kept company with them and fell upon her hands.