That evening a wonderful thing happened to John. It was a moonlit night and Cavanaugh took the two older Whaleys down to see the progress on the new building. That left John and Tilly on the veranda together. At first the poor boy's tongue was tied, but under the influence of Tilly's calm self-possession he soon found himself conversing with her quite easily. There was a sort of commotion in the chicken-house near the barn and they started down there to see what had caused it. He had seen young men of the better class at Ridgeville walking with young ladies, holding to their arms at night, and in no little perturbation he wondered if he ought to offer Tilly his arm. He did not know, and he wondered what Joel Eperson would do in the circumstances. Finally he plunged into the matter. "Won't you take my arm?" he asked, so naturally that he was surprised at himself.
She did so, although the path was clear and the distance short, and the gentle pressure of her hand on his arm sent an inexplicable thrill through him. She even leaned slightly and confidently against his shoulder, and that, too, was a wonderful experience. He was filled with ecstatic emotion. He slowed down his step and clumsily adapted his long stride to her shorter one. There was a vast, swelling joy in his throat. At the barn-yard gate she released his arm and opened it, and at once he had a fear that he had made a mistake in not forestalling her. He was flooded with shame at the thought that Joel Eperson would have known what was proper and have acted quicker.
"Excuse me," the poor fellow stammered, his eyes on hers. He had never used such words before and they sounded as strange to him as if they had belonged to a foreign tongue.
"Excuse you, why?" she inquired, perplexed.
"Because—because I didn't open the gate for you," he replied. "I wasn't thinking."
"Oh, that doesn't matter," she answered, evidently pleased, and there was something in her eyes that he had never seen there before. Her face seemed to fill with a warm light, and her pretty lips were slightly parted. They walked on. The chicken-house, a shack with a lean-to roof against the barn, was near and he stood by her as she looked in at the open door.
"One of the planks they roost on fell down," she explained. "Too many of them got on it. They will huddle together, warm as it is."
"I can fix it," he proposed, "but I'd have to have a light."
Tilly hesitated, looking again into the shack. There was a low chirping from the perches overhead.
"Never mind to-night," she said. "They have found new places and will soon settle down."