So young Gordon went away across the hills, whistling his dogs cheerily on, the sunlight glimmering on the slanting barrels of his gun. They looked back twice. The third time she looked he was gone beyond the brown hill’s crest.
She came to her own door all of a tremble. Old man Jocelyn sat sunning his gray head on the south porch, lean hands folded over his stomach, pipe between his teeth.
“Daddy,” she said, “look!” and she held up the partridge. Jocelyn smiled.
All the afternoon she was busy in the kitchen, and when the early evening shadows lengthened across the purple hills she stood at the door, brown eyes searching the northern slope.
The early dusk fell over the alder swales; the brawling brook was sheeted with vapor.
Up-stairs she heard her father dressing in his ancient suit of rusty black and pulling on his obsolete boots. She stole into the dining-room and looked at the table. Three covers were laid.
She had dressed in her graduating gown—a fluffy bit of white and ribbon. Her dark soft hair was gathered simply; a bunch of blue gentian glimmered at her belt.
Suddenly, as she lingered over the table, she heard Gordon’s step on the porch, and the next instant her father came down the dark stairway into the dining-room just as Gordon entered.
The old man halted, eyes ablaze. But Gordon came forward gravely, saying, “I asked Miss Jocelyn if I might come as your guest to-night. It would have been a lonely Thanksgiving at home.”
Jocelyn turned to his daughter in silence. Then the three places laid at table and the three chairs caught his eye.