“My father said that I would want to go out and see things and know things; that I mustn’t be married to a––a lumber jack. He said it was no place for me in the hills.”
“And this man, this bishop, is going to send you away somewhere, to school?” he guessed shrewdly.
“I don’t know, I suppose that was it,” said the girl slowly. “Yesterday I wanted to go so much. It was just as father said. He had taught me all he knew. And I thought the world outside the hills was full of just the most wonderful things, all ready for me to go and see and pick up. And to-day I don’t care.”
She looked down at the cap in her hands, at the 30 dog at her feet, and down the hillside to the little cabin in the hemlocks. They were all she had in the world.
The boy, watching her eagerly, saw the look and read it rightly.
He got up and stood before her, saying pleadingly:
“Don’t forget to count me, Ruth. You’ve got me, you know.”
Perhaps it was because he had so answered her unspoken thought. Perhaps it was because she was afraid of the bare world. Perhaps it was just the eternal surrender of woman.
When she looked up at him her eyes were full of great, shining tears, the first that they had known since she had kissed Daddy Tom and run out into the night.
He lifted her into his arms, and, together, they faced the white, desolate world all below them and plighted to each other their untried troth.