Easton forgot them both, and walked back toward his hotel. On the way down the slope from the house he looked in the direction of the vegetable garden, and faltered. Mrs. Farrell’s voice floated over to him in a gay laugh from the ranks of the pea vines, and an insane longing to behold her filled him to the throat. But he could not go and tell her he loved her, there among the pea pods; even he felt that. He twisted his mustache into the corner of his mouth, beat the ground with his stick, and hurried away, hurt, tormented, but not at all daunted or moved from his mind to have speech with her as soon as ever he could.
When she had finished her part of the work, which was to gather peas with fitful intensity and then to talk for long intervals to Rachel’s taciturn perseverance, she emptied her small harvest into the basket that one of the Woodward boys carried, and walked picturesquely back to the house under her broad hat, which dropped its shade just across her lips like a grace veil, and left her dark eyes to glow, starlike, from its depths. In this becoming effect she sat down on the kitchen threshold, with the wide doors open round her, and took some of the peas into her lap and shelled them with a lazy ease, moving her arms from the elbows resting on her knees, and managing chiefly with her flexile wrists, and went on talking with Rachel of a picnic excursion to the mountain which she wished to plan. “We shall not want any one along but the youngest Miss Jewett and Jenny Alden and Ben, and we can have a splendid time. It’s just the right season, now. Come, Mrs. Woodward,” she called into the kitchen, “are you going to let me go?”
“You mostly do what you like, Mrs. Farrell,” answered Mrs. Woodward’s voice, “and the only way I get any obedience out of you is to forbid you to do what you don’t like. Yes, go. All I ask is that you don’t take me.”
“Now, then, Miss Prim,” said Mrs. Farrell to Rachel, “you see you’re commanded to go. What had we better wear?”
“Oh, wear all your worst things,” said Mrs. Woodward.
“Yes, but I’m one of those poor people who can’t afford to have any but best things. I’m going to get you to lend me some of your worst, Mrs. Woodward, and I’m going to borrow Ben’s hat. Will you lend it to me, Ben?” she tenderly asked of the grave young fellow who stood near, and who had to shift himself from one foot to the other and turn his face away before he could assent. She laughed at his trepidation, as if she knew the reason of it. But by the time he could confront Mrs. Farrell again, she apparently did not care for his answer. Her eyes were fixed upon the figure of Gilbert as he came up the road toward the house. He came in sight suddenly, as if he had climbed the wall from one of the birch-bordered meadows. He was better worth looking at than Ben Woodward, being very brave in his high boots and his straw hat, with his bundled rod and his trout basket, a strong, sinewy shape, and a face very handsome in its fashion. As he drew nearer, he turned aside and slanted his course toward the door where Mrs. Farrell sat. Before he came up to her place Rachel had silently vanished within, and Mrs. Farrell sat there alone.
“Good morning,” he called out, taking off his hat.
“Good morning,” returned Mrs. Farrell, without changing her posture. “Don’t you want to stop and help shell peas?”
Either their acquaintance had prospered rapidly after Easton had left them together the afternoon before, or else this was Mrs. Farrell’s indifference to social preliminaries.
“No, thanks,” said Gilbert, tranquilly, wiping his forehead with his handkerchief. “My domestic gifts are small. But I was thinking, as I came along, that I would give you people my trout.”