"Well, never mind about that," Ann said, laying her hand almost with shamefaced stealth on the girl's head and looking towards the swamp through the open door. "I see your cow is heading for home on her own accord. Follow her. This is our secret; nobody need know but us two. Your mammy would have you put in a house of detention if she knew it. Slip over and see me again when her back is turned. Lord, Lord, I wonder why I never thought about pitying you all along, instead of actually hating you for no fault of yours!"
Virginia rose, put the plate on the table, and, with her face full of emotion, she impulsively put her arms around Ann's neck.
"You are the best woman on earth," she said, huskily, "and I love you—I can't help it. I love you."
"Oh, I reckon you don't do that," Ann said, coloring to the roots of her heavy hair. "That wouldn't be possible."
"But I do, I tell you, I do," Virginia said again, "and I'll never do an unwomanly thing again in my life. But I don't want to meet Luke King again. I couldn't after what has happened."
"Oh, you let that take care of itself," Ann said, accompanying Virginia to the door.
She stood there, her red hands folded under her apron, and watched the girl move slowly across the meadow after the plodding cow.
"What a pretty trick!" Ann mused. "And to think she'd actually put her arms round my old neck and hug me, and say she—oh, that was odd, very, very odd! I don't seem to be my own boss any longer."
An hour later, as she stood in her front porch cutting the dying vines from the strings which held them upward, she saw Mrs. Waycroft hastening along the road towards her. "There, I clean forgot that woman," Ann said, her brow wrinkled. "She's plumb full of what she heard that scamp saying to Virginia at the graveyard. I'll have to switch her off the track some way, the Lord only knows how, but off she goes, if I have to lie to my best friend till I'm black in the face."
"I've been wanting to get over all morning," the visitor said, as she opened the gate and hurried in. "I had my breakfast two hours ago, but Sally Hinds and her two children dropped in and detained me. They pretended they wanted to talk about the next preaching, but it was really to get something to eat. The littlest one actually sopped the gravy from the frying-pan with a piece of bread-crust. I wanted to slip out last night and come over here to watch the road to see if Virginia Hemingway kept her promise, but just about that hour Jim Dilk—he lives in my yard, you know—he had a spasm, and we all thought he was going to die."