Then an arm was about his neck, and a velvet cheek lay against his face a moment.
"It's the way a bird's wing brushes by in the dark. They all leave the nest, they all leave the nest," he said, and rose stiffly and went in.
"He a'most creaked," said his wife, shortly.
"Oh, mother!" cried Tally, and hid her face in her mother's neck, and poured out her story, and was comforted.
Going to the village the next morning, Mr. James was handed another letter for Tally.
"Guess your Laury's got a beau," said the postmistress.
"Her mother had one at her age," said Mr. James, dryly.
"S'pose she'll be gittin' merried soon,"—a foregone conclusion needing only the affirmative.
"Sooner or later," was the response. And he went home a little happier for having defended Tally from public curiosity.
"Guess the old man don't like it very well, he's so short," said the postmistress to the crony who had happened in.
"Not the leastestest mite. He's allus ben consider'ble ambitioned for Taury. Nobody less 'n the Prince o' Wales 'd do for her."
"He'll have to take up 'ith short o' that," said the other, putting back into the box the postal card she had been spelling over, and turning to her little shop. "She's a good gal an' 'd orter hev a good man. But w'en a gal's father don't think well er the man, she'd better let him be."
"Gals are mighty headstrong nowadays. But I wouldn't 'a' thought—"
"Oh, I ain't sayin' thet I know anything," said the postmistress, her face as blank as if great secrets hid behind it. It is disagreeable to confess you know nothing. You can look as if you knew a great deal.
"I hear, Mr. James," said the minister, drawing up the chaise and pausing on his parochial round that afternoon to look over the stone wall the farmer was mending, "that your daughter will not be long with us. I hope her choice is a wise one."
"First rate!" said Mr. James, taking out his big red handkerchief to wipe his forehead. "Couldn't be better. Me an' her mother think she's done first rate." And there he stood committed.
But that was for the outside. In his heart—Tally would never be happy with what was in his heart. And then a new thought struck him with a pang of joy. What if the fellow who had come to see Tally's folks should find things not quite up to his mark?—What! And break Tally's heart? And shame her before the whole parish, too? He threw down his crowbar, in a rage at himself, at Tally, at all the world, and went striding away as if he were trying to escape his shadow. It would not have made his pursuing thoughts calmer had he known that the same thought, if with a difference, had for the first time occurred to Tally. It was sunset when he found himself sitting on a shelf of rock in the old quarry. The long red light streamed over him and stained the lichens on the wall beyond. Down in the forsaken pit the waters of the pool were black. Well—it was time to go home; the boy had driven the cows up by this, and his wife was waiting for him to milk. There was no such thing as rest for him in this life, nor in the next one, either. He had brought the girl up; he had set his heart on her; he had gone without and spent himself that she might be made the perfect thing she was—and all to give her up now to another man. The perfect thing she was! It was not likely, then, that she would not choose as a perfect thing should. But what odds to him? He was going to lose her, just the same; and more—she would be wrapped up in that husband of hers, and in all the new concerns. That was the way of the world. Love went down; it did not run back. It was what other fathers had to put up with.
Soft purples began to filter through the red of the sunset. He heard a whippoorwill call, far off over the cranberry-swamp; and then there was a silver din of whippoorwills. He remembered the first time Tally ever heard one,—she held out both her little hands to the evening star. "The star is singing!" she had cried. Ah, ah, what a lovely dear she was then!—what a lovely dear she was now! Like a great velvet rose. No wonder she had a lover! Of course, of course—that,
