It's no matter now. And you've been waiting dinner!"
"I ain't no appertite," said her father, ruefully.
"Well, I have!"
"Lally!" he said, staying her as she would have stepped past him, and looking straight into her wondering eyes. "Have you got a feller?"
"What's a feller, father?" her head on one side in a pretty mimicry of ignorance.
"A man that will take you away fum me!"
"There isn't any man alive who can take me away from you!" she said. And putting her arm over his shoulder, she went in with him, and ate her dinner in spirits that were almost contagious.
"Oh, how good this cherry pie is!" she exclaimed. "What is there better than a cherry pie?"
"Two cherry pies," said her father.
"'The boy guessed right the very first time,'" she sang.
"Laura James, child," said her mother, "you're at the table."
"So are you, mother," said the child, who would have been spoiled if love could spoil anything, beginning to clear away the dishes. Her father had not moved, but sat with his elbows on the table and his head in his hands. Lally ran out to bring in her dish-towels from the grass.
"I s'pose you know w'at's happened, mother?" he said. "She's hed a letter. And it's jes the beginnin' of the end. I don' know but I'd as lives she'd never ben born—"
"Mr. James, I'm ashamed of you!" said his wife. "It's temptin' Proverdunce. If we'd never hed any more of her than jes the happiness of this last week, we'd hev hed enough to be grateful for the rest of our lives!"
Coming back for the hot water, Lally began singing again, half under her breath this time:
"There was a certain father
Who thought that he would rather
His daughter should stay single all her life,
Than be happy with a husband—
Husband—husband—oh, there isn't any rhyme to husband!"
"Nor reason, either," said her mother. "Now, Mr. James, that corn's ben growin' fur all it's wuth these hot nights, and is fairly achin' ter be hoed."
"I'm goin', mother, I'm goin'," he said. They were all sitting in the porch that evening, the twilight falling and faint stars showing. The Madeira-vine shed its sweet breath, and the fragrance of the clethra-bush in the swamp blew softly about them, and the far-off crickets seemed only the singing of silence. "Isn't it perfect!" said Lally. "Oh, if you had been in the hospital wards as long as I was, with only the smell of drugs, this air would seem to you just blowing out of heaven!"
"I never quite liked your going ter the hospittle, Lally," said her father.
"Well, you see, it was just as I wrote you. If I stayed after I was through college to study medicine—"
"An' be a doctor!"
"It would have taken just as long again, and twice the expense—"
"Oh, consarn the expense!"
"But if I went into the hospital to be trained for a nurse, it would take only two years and no expense at all. And then plenty of work near home, where I could see you and come home for rest—"
"It don't seem jes wuth w'ile ter go ter college ter be a nuss," said her mother.
"Yes, dear. I shall be all the better nurse. That is, if I'm a nurse at all now," hesitatingly. "Perhaps I sha'n't be a nurse now, and you'll think those two years in the hospital have gone for nothing. Only, if I hadn't been in the hospital,"—pulling down a piece of the Madeira-vine about her,—"I never should have met him, maybe."
"Him!" cried her father.
"Dr. Lewis. And knowing how to nurse, I may be of a great deal of use to him. Now I'll tell you all about him!" she exclaimed. "He's—he's—well, he's Dr. Lewis!" getting herself farther into the shadow. "And you can't help liking him; and he'll come out here and settle,—old Dr. Payne's looking for some one to take his place, you know. That is, if he thinks best after looking the ground over."
"'Tain't good enough for him, mebbe."
"Why, Father James, I shouldn't think this was you!"
"By George! I shouldn't think 'twas! 'Tain't w'at I expected!"
