quaff a draft of the
tenderness that he always found offered him and keep equanimity enough
to go on with the affairs in hand. What business had a woman's eyes to
be so filled with a young child's innocence, a violet's shyness, a
passion of fostering gentleness, mirth that ripples like the surface
of the crystal pools, and--could it be dawning--love? Everett had been
in a state of uncertainty and misery so abject that it hid itself
under an unusually casual manner that had for weeks kept Rose Mary
from suspecting to the least degree the condition of his mind. There
is a place along the way in the pilgrimage to the altar of Love, when
the god takes on an awe-inspiring phase which makes a man hide his
eyes in his hands with fear of the most abject. At such times with her
lamp of faith a woman goes on ahead and lights the way for both, but
while Rose Mary's flame burned strongly, her unconsciousness was
profound.

"I'm so glad you came," she said with the usual rose signal to him in
her cheeks. "I've been wondering where you were and just a little bit
uneasy about you. Mr. Newsome has been here and wants to see you. He
stayed to dinner and waited for you for two hours. Stonie and Tobe and
all the others looked for you. I know you are hungry. Will you have a
drink of milk before I go with you to get your dinner I saved?"

"What did the Honorable Gid want?" asked Everett, and there was a
strange excitement in his eyes as he laid his hand quickly on a small,
irregular bundle of stones that bulged out of his kit. His voice had a
sharp ring in it as he asked his question.

"Oh, I think he just wanted to see you because he likes you,"
answered Rose Mary with one of her lifted glances and quick smiles. "A
body can take their own liking for two other people and use it as a
good strong rope just to pull them together sometimes. I'm awfully
fond of Mr. Newsome--and you," she added as she came over from one of
the crocks with Peter Rucker's blue cup brimming with ice cold cream
in her hand and offered it to Everett.

Instead of taking the cup from her Everett clasped his fingers around
her slender wrist in the fashion of young Petie and thus with her hand
raised the cup to his lips. And as his eyes looked down over its blue
rim into hers the excitement in them died down, first into a very deep
tenderness that changed slowly into a quiet determination which seemed
to be pouring a promise and a vow into her very soul. Something in