and moved the chairs first one way and then
another, and did a good many other needless things. Needless: for a
lover, if he be a lover, does not see furniture or dress.

And then she sat down by the fire, and tried to sew, and tried to look
unconcerned, and tried to feel unconcerned, and tried not to expect
anybody, and tried to make her heart keep still. And tried in vain. For
a gentle rap at the door sent her pulse up twenty beats a minute and
made her face burn. And Hartsook was for the first time, abashed in the
presence of Hannah. For the oppressed girl had, in two weeks, blossomed
out into the full-blown woman.

And Ralph sat down by the fire, and talked of his school and her school,
and everything else but what he wanted to talk about. And then the
conversation drifted back to Flat Creek, and to the walk through the
pasture, and to the box-elder tree, and to the painful talk in the lane.
And Hannah begged to be forgiven, and Ralph laughed at the idea that she
had done anything wrong. And she praised his goodness to Shocky, and he
drew her little note out of--But I agreed not tell you where he kept it.
And then she blushed, and he told how the note had sustained him, and
how her white face kept up his courage in his flight down the bed of
Clifty Creek. And he sat a little nearer, to show her the note that he
had carried in his bosom--I have told it! And--but I must not proceed. A
love-scene, ever so beautiful in itself, will not bear telling. And so I
shall leave a little gap just here, which you may fill up as you please.
. . . Somehow, they never knew how, they got to talking about the future
instead of the past, after that, and to planning their two lives as one
life. And . . . And when Miss Nancy and Mrs. Thomson returned later in
the evening, Ralph was standing by the mantel-piece, but Shocky noticed
that his chair was close to Hannah's. And good Miss Nancy Sawyer looked
in Hannah's face and was happy.

CHAPTER XXXIV.

"HOW IT CAME OUT"

We are all children in reading stories. We want more than all else to
know how it all came out at the end, and, if our taste is not perverted,
we like it to come out well. For my part, ever since I began to write
this story, I have been anxious to know how it was going to come out.

Well, there were very few invited. It took place at ten in the morning.
The "preacher-in-charge" came, of course. Miss Nancy Sawyer was there.
But Ralph's uncle was away, and Aunt