ybody else. Certainly she and Anne and
Farvie had got to make up to the innocent Jeff. And equally they had all
got to make up to Farvie. But going once noiselessly through the hall,
she glanced in and saw the colonel sitting alone by the window, Mary
Nellen's Virgil in his hand. He was well back from the glass, and Lydia
guessed that it was because he wanted to command the orchard and not
himself be seen. She ran up to her own room and also looked. There he
was, Jeff, striding round in the shadow of the brick wall, walking like
a man with so many laps to do before night. Sometimes he squared his
shoulders and walked hard, but as if he knew he was going to get
there--the mysterious place for which he was bound. Sometimes his
shoulders sagged, and he had to drive himself. Lydia felt, in her
throat, the aching misery of youth and wondered if she had got to cry
again, and if this hateful, wholly unsatisfactory creature was going to
keep her crying. As she watched, he stopped, and then crossed the
orchard green directly toward her. She stood still, looking down on him
fascinated, her breath trembling, as if he might glance up and ask her
what business she had staring down there, spying on him while he did
those mysterious laps he was condemned to, to make up perhaps for the
steps he had not taken on free ground in all the years.

"Got a spade?" she heard him call.

"Yes." It was Anne's voice. "Here it is."

"Why, it's new," Lydia heard him say.

He was under her window now, and she could not see him without putting
her head over the sill.

"Yes," said Anne. "I went down town and bought it."

Anne's voice sounded particularly satisfied. Lydia knew that tone. It
said Anne had been able to accomplish some fit and clever deed, to
please. It was as if a fountain, bubbling over, had said, "Have I given
you a drink, you dog, you horse, you woman with the bundle and the
child? Marvellous lucky I must be. I'll bubble some more."

Jeff himself might have understood that in Anne, for he said:

"I bet you brought it home in your hand."

"No takers," said Anne. "I bet I did."

"That heavy spade?"

"It wasn't heavy."

"You thought I'd be spading to keep from growing dotty. Good girl. Give
it here."

"But, Jeff!" Anne's voice flew after him as he went. Lydia felt herself
grow hot, knowing Anne had taken the big first step that had looked so
impossible when they saw him. She had called him Jeff. "Jeff, where are
you going