The boy looked out at the sweet stars paling under the tropical moon, then he bent his eyes upon the beautiful girl, and slowly said:
“I am going now. Remember, I never did it, and keep yourself just as you are until that day when the white cap string shall come home again.” He was gone, and Dorcas sat silent for a moment; then the painful consciousness forced itself upon her that her father’s voice was calling. She dropped her head upon the pillow, wrapped the sheet about her throat, and closed her eyes. The voice came nearer. “Dorcas, Dorcas,” it said; but she did not stir. Her heart was wildly beating with fear lest the youth of her dream should be pursued, but her parent went calmly away, and only at breakfast was there any allusion to the circumstance.
“Dorcas, thee talked strangely, last night, in thy sleep.”
The girl’s face crimsoned as she felt the untruthfulness of her reply: “How funny that is!” but the motherly eye was not long without discovering the loss of the nightcap string.
“Daughter,” she said, “how was it possible for thee to tear thy cap in this way? It is as though thee had willed to do it and done it with all thy might.”
And the girl replied, with some of her hoydenish spirit: “Throw the old thing away; I have plenty more,” for it seemed as if she could not tolerate the witness to her secret compact.
“I am surprised,” answered the gentle mother. “Waste not, want not. Get thy thimble and thread; here is some muslin, thee can hem another string.”
Dorcas did not allow herself to brood over her midnight adventure. Perhaps she was pained by the part of concealment that she played toward her parents; perhaps she was troubled, too, by a recollection of the rebuke contained in the boy’s words. She was sometimes inclined to feel that he was right and her own little world was wrong in so strictly upholding law, and in believing the ways of God were at utter variance from the ways of generous men.
“I care not to live any better life than that mon grandpère lives.”
These words were ringing in her ears, and she pictured to herself the detail of that life, far enough from reality, no doubt, but a pretty idyl. She began to read much history, and once asked her mother to allow her to take French lessons from a villager. Lucretia was shocked.