Sometimes I saw her early in the garden, where greens grew and beans and peas; or sometimes she hoed weeds where potatoes and early corn stood in rows along a small strip planted between orchard and posy-bed.
And sometimes I could see her a-milking our three Jersey cows, or, with a sickle, cutting green fodder for my mare, Kaya, whose dainty hoofs I often heard stamping the barn floor.
But after the dinner hour, and when the long, still afternoons lay listlessly betwixt mid-summer sun and the pale, cool dusk, she came from her chamber all freshened like a faint, sweet breeze in her rustling petticoat of sheer, sprigged stuff, to seat herself on the west veranda with her knitting.
Day after day I lay on my trundle where I could see her. She never noticed me, though by turning her head she could have seen me where I lay.
I do not now remember clearly what was my state of mind except that a dull bitterness reigned there.
Which was, of course, against all common sense and decent reason.
I had no claim upon this girl. I had kissed her—through no fault of hers, and by no warrant and no encouragement from her to so conduct in her regard.
I had kissed her once. But other men had done that perhaps with no more warrant. And I, though convinced that the girl knew not how to parry such surprises, brooded sullenly upon mine own indiscretion with her; and pondered upon the possible behaviour of other men with her. And I silently damned their impudence, and her own imprudence which seemed to have taught her little in regard to men.
But in my mind the chiefest and most sullen trouble lay in what I had seen under the lilacs that night in June.
And when I closed my eyes I seemed to see her in Steve Watts' arms, and the lad's ardent embrace of her throat and hair, and the flushed passion marring his youthful face——