. You know I never am well in hot weather."

Nathan knew that Susan was really worried over Elizabeth's prospects, but
her luckless remark upon the marriage of farmers cut into his raw,
quivering consciousness of personal failure like a saw-bladed knife,
torturing the flesh as it went. His failure to place her where her own
natural characteristics and attainments deserved had eaten into his mind
like acid. In proportion as he loved her and acknowledged her worth he was
humiliated by the fact that she was not getting all out of life of which
she was capable, as his wife, and it left him sensitive regarding her
possible estimate of it.

"She always seems satisfied," he said to himself as he turned his
pitchfork to get a hold on the pile into which he had thrust it, "but here
she is pityin' this here girl that's goin' t' be married as if she goin'
t' be damned."

The Adam's apple in his wrinkled throat tightened threateningly, and to
keep down any unmanly weakness it indicated he fell upon the hay savagely,
but the suspicion stayed with him and left its bitter sting.

CHAPTER VI

"DIDN'T TAKE 'EM LONG"

John Hunter and Elizabeth Farnshaw rode away in the cool summer evening,
wholly unconscious of the thoughts of others. The sun had dropped behind
the low hills in front of them, and as they rode along, the light-floating
clouds were dyed blazing tints of red and gold, as glowing and rosy as
life itself appeared to the young pair. Elizabeth took off her hat and let
the cool evening breeze blow through the waves of hair on her temples and
about the smooth braids which, because of the heat of the prematurely hot
summer day, had been wound about her head. Her eyes were dreamy and her
manner detached as she let the pony wander a half length ahead of its
companion, and she was unaware that John was not talking. She was just
drinking in the freshness of the evening breeze and sky, scarcely
conscious of any of her surroundings, glad as a kitten to be alive, and as
unaware of self as a young animal should be.

John Hunter rode at her side, watching the soft curls on her round girlish
neck, athrob and athrill with her presence, and trying to formulate the
thing he had brought her out to say. It was not till they were turning
into the lane beside the new house that his companion realized that he had
been more than usually quiet.

"You are a Quaker to-night, evidently, and do not speak till the spirit
moves, Mr. Hunter