Besides, it's always darkest just afore dawn, they say; anyhow, I've had that preached to me ever since I was a girl and I've tried to believe it through a good many cloudy spells.Roscoe, don't you let old Jed or anybody DRIVE you out of Denboro, but, if you WANTto go--if you think you'd ought to go, to earn money or anything, don't you worry about leavin' Comfort.I'll look out for her as well as if she was my own.Remember that."I laid my hand on hers."Thank you," I said, earnestly."Dorinda, you are a good woman."To my surprise the eyes behind the spectacles became misty.Tears in Dorinda's eyes! When she spoke it was in, for her, a curiously hesitating tone.
"Roscoe," she faltered, "I wonder if you'd be cross if I asked about what wan't any of my business.I'm old enough to be your grandma, pretty nigh, so I'm goin' to risk it.You used to be independent enough.You never used to care for the town or anybody in it.Lately you've changed.Changed in a good many ways.Is somethin' besides this Lane affair frettin' you? Is somebody frettin' you? Are you worried about--that one?"She had caught me unawares.I felt the blood tingle in my cheeks.
I tried to laugh and made a failure of the attempt.
"That one?" I repeated."I-- Why, I don't understand, Dorinda.""Don't you? Well, if you don't then I'm just talkin' silly, that's all.If you do, I....Humph! I might have known it!"She turned like a shot and jerked the door open.There was a rattle, a series of thumps, and a crash.Lute was sprawling upon the floor at our feet.I gazed at him in open-mouthed astonishment.
Dorinda sniffed scornfully.
"I might have known it," she repeated."Sittin' on the stairs there, listenin', wan't you?"Lute raised himself to his knees.
"I think," he panted, "I--I swan! I shouldn't wonder if I'd broke my leg!""Um-hm! Well, if you'd broke your neck 'twouldn't have been no more'n you deserve.Shame on you! Sneakin' thing!""Now, Dorindy, I--I wan't listenin'.I was just--""Don't talk to me.Don't you open your mouth.And if you open it to anybody else about what you heard I'll--I declare I'll shut you up in the dark closet and keep you there, as if you was three year old.Sometimes I think your head ain't any older than that.Go right out of this house.""But where'll I go?"
"I don't care where you go.Only don't let me set eyes on you till dinner time.March!"Lute backed away as she advanced, waving both his hands and pleading and expostulating.
"Dorindy, I tell you...WHAT makes you so unlikely?...Iwas just...All right then," desperately, "I'll go! And if you never set eyes on me again 'twon't be my fault.You'll be sorry then.If you never see me no more you'll be sorry.""I'll set eyes on you at dinner time.I ain't afraid of that.
Git!"
She followed him to the kitchen and then returned.
"Ah hum!" she sighed, "it's pretty hard to remember that about darkest just afore dawn when you have a burden like that on your shoulders to lug through life.It's night most of the time then.
Poor critter! he means well enough, too.And once he was a likely enough young feller, though shiftless, even then.But he had a long spell of fever three year after we was married and he's never been good for much since.I try to remember that, and to be patient with him, but it's a pretty hard job sometimes."She sighed again.I had often wondered how a woman of her sense could have married Luther Rogers.Now she was telling me.
"I never really cared for him," she went on, looking toward the door through which the discomfited eavesdropper had made his exit.
"There was somebody else I did care for, but he and I quarreled, and I took Luther out of spite and because my folks wanted me to.
I've paid for it since.Roscoe," earnestly, "Roscoe, if you care for anybody and she cares for you, don't let anything keep you apart.If she's worth a million or fifty cents that don't make any difference.It shouldn't be a matter of her folks or your folks or money or pride or anything else.It's a matter for just you and her.And if you love each other, that's enough.I tell you so, and I know."I was more astonished than ever.I could scarcely believe that this was the dry, practical Dorinda Rogers who had kept house for Mother and me all these years.And with my astonishment were other feelings, feelings which warned me that I had better make my escape before I was trapped into betraying that which, all the way home from Mackerel Island, I had been swearing no one should ever know.
I would not even admit it to myself, much less to anyone else.
I did not look at Dorinda, and my answer to her long speech was as indifferent and careless as I could make it.
"Thank you, Dorinda," I said."I'll remember your advice, if Iever need it, which isn't likely.Now I must go to my room and change my clothes.These are too badly wrinkled to be becoming."When I came down, after an absence of half an hour, she was sitting by the window, sewing.
"Comfort's waitin' to see you, Roscoe," she said."I've told her all about it.""YOU'VE told her--what?" I demanded, in amazement.
"About your sellin' the Lane and losin' your job, and so on.Don't look at me like that.'Twas the only common-sense thing to do.
She'd heard old Leather-Lungs whoopin' out there in the kitchen and she'd heard you and me talkin' here in the dinin'-room.I hoped she was asleep, but she wan't.After you went upstairs she called for me and wanted to know the whole story.I told her what I knew of it.Now you can tell her the rest.She takes it just as I knew she would.You done it and so it's all right.""Roscoe, is that you?"
It was Mother calling me.I went into the darkened room and sat down beside the bed.
She and I had much to say to each other.This time I kept back nothing, except my reason for selling the land.I told her frankly that that reason was a secret, and that it must remain a secret, even from her.
