Yes, Oliver could comfort her, Mildred believed; for if there was a ray of hope he would be sure to see it; and although it then was nearly nine, she resolved to go to him at once. Hepsy would fret, she knew; but she did not care for her,—she didn’t care for anybody; and drying her tears, she was soon moving down the Cold Spring path, not lightly, joyously, as she was wont to do, but slowly, sadly, for the world was changed to her since she trod that path before, singing of the sunshine and the merry queen of May.
She found old Hepsy knitting by the door, and enjoying the bright moonlight, inasmuch as it precluded the necessity of wasting a tallow candle.
“Want to see Oliver?” she growled. “You can’t do it. There’s no sense in your having so much whispering up there, and that’s the end on’t. Widder Simms says it don’t look well for you, a big, grown-up girl, to be hangin’ round Oliver.”
“Widow Simms is an old gossip!” returned Mildred, adding by way of gaining her point, that she was going to “buy a pair of new, large slippers for Hepsy’s corns.”
The old lady showed signs of relenting at once, and when Mildred threw in a box of black snuff with a bean in it, the victory was won, and she at liberty to join Oliver. He heard her well-known step, but he was not prepared for her white face and swollen eyes, and in much alarm he asked her what had happened.
“Oh, Oliver!” she cried, burying her face in the pillow, “it’s all over. I shall never marry Lawrence. I have promised to refuse him, and my heart is aching so hard that I most wish I were dead.”
Very wonderingly he looked at her, as in a few words she told him of the exciting scene through which she had been passing since she left him so full of hope. Then laying her head a second time upon the pillow, she cried aloud, while Oliver, too, covering his face with the sheet, wept great burning tears of joy—joy at Mildred’s pain. Poor, poor Oliver; he could not help it, and for one single moment he abandoned himself to the selfishness which whispered that the world would be the brighter and his life the happier if none ever had a better claim to Mildred than himself.
“Ain’t you going to comfort me one bit?” came plaintively to his ear, but he did not answer.
The fierce struggle between duty and self was not over yet, and Mildred waited in vain for his reply.
“Are you crying, too?” she asked, as her ear caught a low, gasping sob. “Yes, you are,” she continued, as removing the sheet she saw the tears on his face.