There was a pause. At the foot of the hill a little brook ran merrily over the water-browned stones, and its monotonous lapping could be heard distinctly. Under the trees across the open some of the couples had drawn together and were singing:
“I see the boat go 'round the bend,
Good-bye, my lover, good-bye.”
Dolly had said exactly what he had never hoped to hear her say, and the fact of her broaching such a subject in such a frank, determined way sent a glow of happiness all over him.
“I don't think,” he began, thoughtfully, “that Rayburn or any man could keep me from”—he looked into her full, expectant eyes, and then plunged madly—“could keep me from caring for you, from loving you with all my heart, Dolly; but it really is a terrible thing to know that you are robbing a girl of not only the love of her parents but her rightful inheritance, when, when”—he hurried on, seeing that an impulse to speak was urging her to protest—“when you haven't a cent to your name, and, moreover, have a black eye from your father's mistakes.”
“I knew that's what he'd said!” declared the girl, almost white with anger. “I knew it! Oh, Alan, Rayburn Miller might be able to draw back and leave a girl at such a time, but no man could that truly loves as—as I believe you love me. I have known how you have felt all this time, and it has nearly broken my heart, but I could not write to you when you had never even told me, what you have to-day. You must not let anybody or anything influence you, Alan. I'd rather be a poor man' s wife, and do my own work, than let a paltry thing like my father's money keep me from standing by the man I love.”
Alan' s face was ablaze. He drew himself up and gazed at her, all his soul in his eyes. “Then I shall not give you up,” he declared; “not for anything in the world. And if there is a chance in the railroad idea I shall work at it ten times as hard, now that I have talked with you.”
They sat together in blissful ignorance of the passage of time, till some one shouted out that Frank Hill-house was coming with the watermelon. Then all the couples in sight or hearing ran to the spring, where Hillhouse could be seen plunging the big melon into the water. Hattie Alexander and Charlie Durant, who had been perched on a jutting bowlder high up on the hill behind Dolly and Alan, came half running, half sliding down, catching at the trees to keep from falling.
“Better come get your teeth in that melon,” Hattie said, with a knowing smile at Dolly. They lived next door to each other and were quite intimate.
“Come on, Alan.” Dolly rose. “Frank will never forgive me if I don't have some.”