She had written to thank him for it all, and not yet had he
answered her letter. He had said that he was coming over to
Lonesome Cove and he had not come--why should he, on her account?
Between them all was over--why should he? The question was absurd
in her mind, and yet the fact that she had expected him, that she
so WANTED him, was so illogical and incongruous and vividly true
that it raised her to a sitting posture on the log, and she ran
her fingers over her forehead and down her dazed face until her
chin was in the hollow of her hand, and her startled eyes were
fixed unwaveringly on the running water and yet not seeing it at
all. A call--her step-mother's cry--rang up the ravine and she did
not hear it. She did not even hear Bub coming through the
underbrush a few minutes later, and when he half angrily shouted
her name at the end of the vista, down-stream, whence he could see
her, she lifted her head from a dream so deep that in it all her
senses had for the moment been wholly lost.
"Come on," he shouted.
She had forgotten--there was a "bean-stringing" at the house that
day--and she slipped slowly off the log and went down the path,
gathering herself together as she went, and making no answer to
the indignant Bub who turned and stalked ahead of her back to the
house.
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