she depended
on it to ease her heart, put her apron to her eyes, and held it there,
pressing back the tears.

Herman drove into the yard, and she did not hear him. She went to the
fireplace now, and leaned her head against the corner of the mantel,
looking down, with a bitter stolidity, at the hearth. Herman
unharnessed, and came in, a tall brown-haired fellow with dark eyes full
of softness, and a deep simplicity of feeling. As his foot struck the
sill, his mother roused herself, and became at once animated by a
commonplace activity. She did not face him, for fear he should find the
tear-marks on her cheeks; but when he had thrown his cap into a chair,
and gone to the sink to plunge his face in cold water, and came out
dripping, she did steal a look at him, and at once softened into a
smiling pleasure. He was her handsome son always, but to-day he looked
brilliantly excited; eager, also, as if he had something to share with
her, and was timid about presenting it.

"Mother!" said Herman. He was standing before her now, smiling
invitingly, and she smiled back again and picked a bit of lint from his
collar for the excuse of coming near him, and proving to herself her
proud ownership. "I've had a letter."

"From Annie?"

He nodded.

"What's she say?" asked his mother. But before he could answer, she
threw in a caressing invitation. "You want I should get you a piece o'
gingerbread and a glass o' milk?"

"No, I ain't hungry. She says she's kep' school about long enough, and
if I'm goin' to farm it, she'll farm it, too. I guess she'd be married
the first o' the summer, if we could fetch it."

Mrs. Dill stepped over to the hearth and sank into her chair. It seemed
as if there were to be another family council. Her silence stirred him.

"I asked her," he hastened to say. "I coaxed her, mother. She ain't as
forward as I make it out, the way I've told it."

"No," said his mother absently. She was resting her elbows on the
chair-arm, and, with hands lightly clasped, gazing thoughtfully into
space. Fine lines had sprung into her forehead, and now she took off
her glasses and wiped them carefully on her apron, as if that would help
her to an inner vision. "No, I know that. Annie's a nice girl. There's
nothin' forward about Annie. But I was only wonderin' where you could
live. This house is terrible small."

"You know what I thought," Herman reminded her. He spoke impetuously as
if begging her to remember, and therefore