When he was not there, life grew a little easier for her in time,
because of her dreams, the patience that was built from them and
Hale's kindly words, the comfort of her garden and her books, and
the blessed force of habit. For as time went on, she got
consciously used to the rough life, the coarse food and the rude
ways of her own people and her own home. And though she relaxed
not a bit in her own dainty cleanliness, the shrinking that she
felt when she first arrived home, came to her at longer and longer
intervals. Once a week she went down to Uncle Billy's, where she
watched the water-wheel dripping sun-jewels into the sluice, the
kingfisher darting like a blue bolt upon his prey, and listening
to the lullaby that the water played to the sleepy old mill--and
stopping, both ways, to gossip with old Hon in her porch under the
honeysuckle vines. Uncle Billy saw the change in her and he grew
vaguely uneasy about her--she dreamed so much, she was at times so
restless, she asked so many questions he could not answer, and she
failed to ask so many that were on the tip of her tongue. He saw
that while her body was at home, her thoughts rarely were; and it
all haunted him with a vague sense that he was losing her.
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