.

Jenny did not hesitate a moment. "I expected this or something worse,"
she said. "Don't mind, Hobert; so they don't see you, I don't care for
the rest. You must not go one step farther: the lightning will betray
us, you see. I will say I waited for the rain to slack, and the two
storms will clear off about the same time, I dare say. There, good
night!"--and she turned her cheek to him; for she was not one of those
impossible maidens we read of in books, who don't know they are in love,
until after the consent of parents is obtained, and blush themselves to
ashes at the thought of a kiss. To love Hobert was to her the most
natural and proper thing in the world, and she did not dream there was
anything to blush for. It is probable, too, that his constitutional
bashfulness and distrust of himself brought out her greater confidence
and buoyancy.

"And how and where am I ever to see you again?" he asked, as he detained
her, against her better judgment, if not against her will.

"Trust that to me,"--and she hurried away in time to meet and prevent
her father from riding forth in search of her.

Of course there were fault-finding and quarrelling, accusations and
protestations, hard demands and sullen pouting,--so that the home, at no
time so attractive as we like to imagine the home of a young girl who
has father and mother to provide for her and protect her, became to her
like a prison-house. At the close of the first and second days after her
meeting with Hobert, when the work was all faithfully done, she ventured
to ask leave to go over to John Walker's and inquire how the sick man
was; but so cold a refusal met her, that, on the evening of the third
day, she sat down on the porch-side to while away the hour between
working and sleeping, without having renewed her request.

The sun was down, and the first star began to show faintly above a strip
of gray cloud in the west, when a voice, low and tender, called to her,
"Come here, my child!" and looking up she saw Grandmother Walker sitting
on her horse at the gate. She had in the saddle before her her youngest
granddaughter, and on the bare back of the horse, behind her, a little
grandson, both their young faces expressive of the sorrow at home. Jenny
arose on the instant, betraying in every motion the interest and
sympathy she felt, and was just stepping lightly from the porch to the
ground, when a strong hand grasped her shoulder and turned her back. It
was her fath