“Gus is here,” said Dinah, her head appearing at the door, “and he has brought you a book! But I’m going to read it first.”
“Well, I’ll come,” she answered. But she did not go for half an hour; Mr. Hammerton took the new book to her immediately and talked to her until her pale cheeks were in a glow.
The last day of the year, what a day it was!
It was like a mellow day in October; in the afternoon Tessa found herself wandering through Mayfield; as she sauntered past the school-house a voice arrested her, one of the voices that she knew best in the world. She stood near the entrance listening.
That thrilling pathetic voice; it had never touched her as it touched her to-day.
“Old year, you shall not die;
We did so laugh and cry with you,
I’ve half a mind to die with you,
Old year, if you must die.”
She stood but a moment, the voice read on, but she did not care to listen; she went on at a slow pace, enjoying each step of the way past the barren fields lying warm and brown in the sunlight, past the farm-houses, past the low-eaved homestead of the Harrisons, past the iron gates of the Old Place with the voice in her ears and the sigh for the old year in her heart. She almost wished that she could love Felix Harrison; she had refused him five times since her seventeenth birthday and in May she would be twenty-five! He had said that he would never ask her again. Why should she wish for any change to come into her life? If she might always live in the present, she would be content; she had her father and mother and Dine and Gus; her world was broad enough.
The sound of wheels had been pursuing her; a sudden stoppage, then another voice that she knew called to her, “Miss Tessa, will you ride with me?”
“Perhaps you are not going my way,” she said lightly.
“I am going to Dunellen.” He answered her words only.