Molly’s week had been passed in excited anticipation and growing anxiety. And in the end anxiety supervened over every other emotion. At first happiness had well-nigh intoxicated her. Life, the simple daily life of her farm, had been transformed with everything else. The labours that were her routine were accomplished in something like a dream, a dream wherein the good-looking face of a man was always near to her, looking on, encouraging, and smiling his approval of her efforts.
In her the great love that had swept into her young life was no sickly, unwholesome sentiment. It inspired her. It supported her. It gladdened every moment of her day, and stimulated her spirit. She dreamed her dreams as she went about her simple duties. She dreamed, in the fashion of every other woman, of the home she would make for the love with which she had crowned her man. And the home which Molly contemplated was the home she had always known. She had yielded her love, and with it went all she was, all that was hers. There were no reservations. No less than her farm could be the setting wherein her love should find its home.
Every day she looked again for the man without whom the meaning of life would be completely lost to her. She did not expect him, but she looked for him. She knew. She understood. It was spring, and he was far too good a farmer, she told herself, to neglect the season. No, she did not expect his coming, but she looked for it, and her yearning was deep, and full of a profound content.
Then there was that other. Each day with her first waking moments expectancy leapt. Her trust was without question. An assurance, whithersoever it came, was an assurance. A promise would be fulfilled, or why should it be made? Life for Molly had no deceit. So each day she looked for the coming of Blanche, or of her messenger.
She yearned for the coming of Blanche’s promised party frock as she yearned for nothing else in life. Blanche had promised that she should be adorned as no farmer’s wife in Hartspool could possibly be adorned. And adornment, at that moment, meant something to her it had never meant before. It was for the eyes of her man to gaze upon. It was for the added attraction she might possess for him. It was that he might be proud of, and pleased with, the love she had so abundantly yielded him.
So each day she looked for Blanche’s fulfilment of her given word, and with the passing of each she reassured herself of the morrow. And so came the night before the day, and the promise still remained unfulfilled.
That night the climax of her anxiety smote her. She said not one word to Lightning. She uttered no word of complaint. But the smile was less ready in her eyes; there was a curious, deep sinking of her buoyant spirit, and, for the first time, she contemplated the possibilities of the non-fulfilment of the promise she had relied upon.
She had prepared to retire to her bed that night in a dejection of spirit which Lightning was swift to realise. And for all his hatred of the thing the coming day meant, his manner of parting from her was infinitely gentle.
“That swell dame couldn’t lie,” he declared spontaneously. “Ther’s surely eyes you ken look into, Molly, gal, an’ see right through to the truth back of ’em. Her’s was that way.”