The old-fashioned clock on the mantel-piece indicated that it was half-past eleven when Ann had done everything about the house and farm she could think of laying her hands to, and she was about to sit down in the shade of an apple-tree in the yard when she suddenly drew herself up under the inspiration of an idea. Why not start down the road to meet the wagon? No, that would not do. Even to such a close friend as Mrs. Waycroft she could not make such an obvious confession of the impatience which was devouring her. But, and she put the after-thought into action, she would go to the farthest corner of her own land, where her premises touched the main road, and that was fully half a mile. She walked to that point across her own fields rather than run the chance of meeting any one on the road, though the way over ploughed ground, bog, fen, and through riotous growth of thistle and clinging briers was anything but an easy one. Reaching the point to which she had directed her steps, and taking a hasty survey of the road leading gradually up the mountain, she leaned despondently on her rail-fence.
"She won't, she won't—the girl won't!" she sighed. "I feel down in my heart of hearts that she won't. Joe Boyd won't let her; he'd see how ridiculous it would make him appear, and he'd die rather than give in, and yet Mary Waycroft knows something about human nature, and she said—Mary said—"
Far up the road there was a rumble of wheels. Pete McQuill would let his horses go rapidly down-hill, and that, perhaps, was his wagon. It was. She recognized the gaunt, underfed white-and-bay pair through the trees on the mountain-side. Then Ann became all activity. She discovered that one of the rails of the panel of fence near by had quite rotted away, leaving an opening wide enough to admit of the passage of a small pig. To repair such a break she usually took a sound rail from some portion of the fence that was high enough to spare it, and this she now did, and was diligently at work when the wagon finally reached her. She did not look up, although she plainly heard Mrs. Waycroft's voice as she asked McQuill to stop.
"You might as well let me out here," the widow said. "I'll walk back with Mrs. Boyd."
The wagon was lumbering on its way when Ann turned her set face, down which drops of perspiration were rolling, towards her approaching friend.
"You caught me hard at it." She tried to smile casually. "Do you know patching fence is the toughest work on a farm—harder 'n splitting rails, that men complain so much about."
"It's a man's work, Ann, and a big, strong one's, too. You ought never to tax your strength like that. You don't mean to tell me you lifted that stack of rails to put in the new one."
"Yes, but what's that?" Ann smiled. "I shouldered a hundred-and-fifty-pound sack of salt the other day, and it was as hard as a block of stone. I'm used to anything. But I'm through now. Let's walk on home and have a bite to eat."
"You don't seem to care much whether—" Mrs. Waycroft paused and started again. "You haven't forgotten what I said I'd try to find out over there, have you, Ann?"
"Me? Oh no, but I reckon I'm about pegged out with all I've done this morning. Don't I look tired?"