They sat for two hours looking into the starlight, talking a little and dreaming a good deal more until, growing sleepy, they rose and went home.
"What do you two find to say to one another?" Ellen asked, not unkindly, as she met them on their return. But part of their pleasure in one another's company was that they did not need to talk.
The days before a long parting are always difficult. We see the inevitable before us, we try to adjust ourselves, we wait impatient and yet anxious to make each minute last, watching the closing in of time. Mammy got some consolation in looking over and over again her son's clothes that Hertha always attended to and kept in neat repair, and in cooking his favorite dishes. "After the feast he'll surely feel the famine," Ellen thought, remembering the scanty fare of her school days; but she tried in every way to be as considerate as she could, appreciating that she had brought a sorrow, though a necessary one, to the household. For Hertha, who had known a year's tragic homesickness, the future looked black for Tom as well as for herself. She dared not face it and lived each day trying to forget the dark hours that were to come.
Lee Merryvale had been genuinely provoked at losing one of his best hands. He talked earnestly to Tom, who sent him to Ellen, and after a lengthy but fruitless controversy with the older sister he turned to the younger one. "See here," he said to Hertha one day as she was arranging the living-room of the great house, "can't you keep Tom at home?"
"I'd like to."
"He doesn't want to go."
"It seems best," was all Hertha could answer.
"There isn't much in learning a trade these days. Everything is done in the factory. A carpenter doesn't make his doors or his sashes, his sills or his windows; he simply puts together other people's work. I can teach Tom a lot about orange-growing right here, and then he can go off if he wants and have a grove of his own and grow blossoms for his bride."
He laughed at his joke, but added seriously, "Why don't you keep him at home?"
"Ask Ellen," was all Hertha could answer.