Part 26

“Hello yourself!” came in Hepsey's highest tones, from the garden.

“Want anything to-day?”

“Nope!”

There was a brief pause, and then Joe shouted again: “Hepsey!”

“Well?”

“I should think they'd break their vocal cords,” said Winfield.

“I wish they would,” rejoined Ruth, quickly.

“Come here!” yelled Joe. “I want to talk to yer.”

“Talk from there,” screamed Hepsey.

“Where's yer folks?”

“D'know.”

“Say, be they courtin'?”

Hepsey left her work in the garden and came toward the front of the house. “They walk out some,” she said, when she was halfway to the gate, “and they set up a good deal, and Miss Thorne told me she didn't know as she'd do better, but you can't rightly say they're courtin' 'cause city ways ain't like our'n.”

The deep colour dyed Ruth's face and her hands twitched nervously. Winfield very much desired to talk, but could think of nothing to say. The situation was tense.

Joe clucked to his horses. “So long,” he said. “See yer later.”

Ruth held her breath until he passed them, and then broke down. Her self control was quite gone, and she sobbed bitterly, in grief and shame. Winfield tucked his handkerchief into her cold hands, not knowing what else to do.

“Don't!” he said, as if he, too, had been hurt. “Ruth, dear, don't cry!”

A new tenderness almost unmanned him, but he sat still with his hands clenched, feeling like a brute because of her tears.

The next few minutes seemed like an hour, then Ruth raised her head and tried to smile. “I expect you think I'm silly,” she said, hiding her tear stained face again.

“No!” he cried, sharply; then, with a catch in his throat, he put his hand on her shoulder.

“Don't!” she sobbed, turning away from him, “what--what they said--was bad enough!”

The last words ended in a rush of tears, and, sorely distressed, he began to walk back and forth. Then a bright idea came to him.

“I'll be back in a minute,” he said.

When he returned, he had a tin dipper, freshly filled with cold water. “Don't cry any more,” he pleaded, gently, “I'm going to bathe your face.”

Ruth leaned back against the tree and he knelt beside her. “Oh, that feels so good,” she said, gratefully, as she felt his cool fingers upon her burning eyes. In a little while she was calm again, though her breast still heaved with every fluttering breath.

“You poor little woman,” he said, tenderly, “you're just as nervous as you can be. Don't feel so about it. Just suppose it was somebody who wasn't!”

“Who wasn't what?” asked Ruth, innocently.

Winfield crimsoned to the roots of his hair and hurled the dipper into the distance.