Country Neighbors

								

Suddenly she was gone out of the wagon, like a bird let loose from an
imprisoning hand. He saw her running like a swift sweet sprite along the
darkening road.
"Ellen, you hold on!" he cried, whipping up to follow. "I didn't mean
nothin'! Oh, you let me jest speak one word."
But at the noise of his pursuit she fled over the low stone wall, and
without a look behind, dipped into the hollow on her homeward way.
Milton swore miserably and drove on. He saw Mrs. Withington gathering
cowslip greens in a marsh sufficiently removed from home, and that
heartened him to draw rein before the still white house. Ellen would be
alone. When he strode into the sitting-room she sprang up from the
lounge where she had cast herself. The tears still hung in her long
lashes, and her cheeks were white.
"My Lord! Ellen Withington!" he cried, in a shamed and rough remorse.
"Couldn't you give me a chance to speak? I don't know what under the
light o' the sun made me say that. Only you looked so terrible pretty.
But you needn't ha' took it so."
She stood staring at him, fascinated, one brown hand trembling on her
heart. Her eyes shot a glance at the door behind him, and he was enraged
anew with pity of her.
"You don't know what it is to see a girl as pretty as you be," he went
on, as if he scolded her, "and all dressed up to the nines."
She was still looking at him dumbly. She saw beyond him the vista of
Sue's broken life.
"Well, then, won't you be friends?" he urged. "Great king! you couldn't
be any more offish if I'd done it. You needn't think anything's altered.
You're the prettiest creatur' that ever stepped, but I wouldn't give up
Sue for the Queen of England. Now will you say it's square?"
So nothing was changed. She could not understand it, but she nodded at
him and smiled a little. Her trembling did not cease until he was far
upon the road.
When Mrs. Withington came home with her basket of greens, Ellen had
supper all ready, and she ran forward and held a corner of her mother's
apron while they walked together toward the house.
"You look kind o' peaked," said Mrs. Withington tenderly. "What you got
on that old brown thing for?"
"I'm going to weed after supper," Ellen answered. "The garden looks real
bad."
Mrs. Withington gazed at her keenly.
"Henry Fox asked if we were goin' to be home this evenin'," she said,
with much indifference. "I told him I guessed so."
Ellen held the apron hard.
"O mother!" she whispered; "you see him. I haven't got to, have I?"
"Law! no, child," said the other woman. "I guess you ain't. You're
mother's own girl."
So when the dusk came Mrs. Withington sat in the parlor and talked of
crops with Henry, wan beside her, while Ellen, safe at the back of the
house, weeded a bed of pansies purpling there. A soft after-glow lighted
all the windows to flame, and fell full upon the face of one dark
flower, quite human in its sombre wistfulness. Ellen knelt and kissed