"Oh, let us hurry home!" she pleaded, and tried to quicken her pace, though it was Girard who supported her, else she must have fallen, while Dosia slipped a little behind, trying to keep her place by his side, so that when he looked for her she would be there.
"You're so tired," he whispered, with a break in his voice, "and I can't help you!" and she tried to beat back that dear pity and longing with her comforting "No, no, no! I'm not really tired"; her voice thrilled with life, though her feet stumbled.
In that walk beside him, toiling slowly on and on in the bright, far solitude of those empty fields, where even their hands might not touch, they two were so heart-close—so heavenly, so fulfillingly near!
Once he whispered in a yearning distress, "Why are you crying?" And she answered through those welling tears:
"I'm only crying because I'm so glad you're here!"
After a while there was a sound of wheels—wheels! Only a sulky, it proved to be—a mere half-wagon set low down in the springs, and a trotting horse in front, driven by a round-faced boy in a derby hat, the turnout casting long, thin shadows ahead before Girard stopped it.
"You'll have to take another passenger," he said, after explaining matters to the half-unwilling boy, who crowded himself at last to the farthest edge of the seat, so that Lois might take possession of the six inches allotted to her.
She held out her arms hastily. "My boy!" she said, but it was a voice that had hope in it once more.
"Oh, yes, I forgot; here's the baby," said Girard, looking curiously at the bundle before handing it to her. "We'll meet you at the Haledon station very soon now."
In another moment the little vehicle was out of sight, jogging around a bend of the road.