“Do you remember the night we sat and talked in the grape-arbor at your house?” he asked. “Well, you never knew it, but I’ve been there three nights within the last month, hoping that I’d get to see you by some chance or other. I always work late on my accounts, and when I am through and the weather is fine, I walk to your house, climb over the fence, slip through the orchard, and sit in that arbor, trying to imagine you are there with me. I often see a light in your room, and the last time I became so desperate that I actually whistled for you. This way.” He put his thumb and little finger between his lips and made an imitation of a whippoorwill’s call. “You see, no one could tell that from the real thing. If you ever hear that sound from the grape-arbor, you’ll know I need you, little girl, and you must not disappoint me.”
“I’d never respond to it,” Cynthia said firmly. “The idea of such a thing!”
“But you know I can’t go to your house often, with your mother opposing my visits as she does, and when I’m there she never leaves us alone. No, I must have you to myself once in awhile, little woman, and you must help me. Remember, if I call you, I’ll want you badly.”
He whistled again, and the echo came back on the still air from a nearby hillside. They were passing a log cabin which stood a few yards from the roadside.
“Budd Crow moved there today,” Cynthia said, as if desirous of changing the subject. “He rented twenty acres from my father. The White Caps whipped him a week ago, for being lazy and not working for his family. His wife came over and told me all about it. She said it really had brought him to his senses, but that it had broken her heart. She cried while she was talking to me. Why does God afflict some women with men of that kind, and make others the wives of governors and Presidents?”
“Ah, there you are beyond my philosophic depth, Cynthia! You mustn’t bother your pretty head about those things. I sometimes rail against my fate for giving me the ambition of a king, while I do not even know who—But I think you know what I mean!”
“Yes, I think I do,” said the girl sympathetically, “and some day I believe all that will be cleared up. Some coarse natures wouldn’t care a straw about it, but you do care, and it is the things we want and can’t get that count.”
“It is strange,” he said thoughtfully, “but of late I always think of my mother as being young and beautiful. I think of her, too, as being well-bred and educated. I think all those things without any proof even as to what her maiden name was or where she came from—Are you still unhappy at home, Cynthia?”
“Nearly all the time,” the girl sighed. “As she grows older my mother seems more faultfinding and suspicious than ever. Then she has set her mind on my marrying Mr. Hillhouse. They seem to be working together to that end, and it is very tiresome to me.”
“I’m glad you don’t love him,” Floyd said. “I don’t think he could make anyone of your nature happy.”