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said Patty.
“Yes, it is,” said Tom; “would thee like to take a walk up the road as far as Whiteley’s?”
“Yes, I would,” said Patty; “I haven’t been away from the house all day.”
“It’s very damp; it’s too damp to walk,” said Elihu; “besides, thee’s got thy thin shoes on.”
“But we’ll walk in the road, father; I’ll promise not to go off of the road. I’ll put on heavier shoes if thee thinks that these are too thin.”
“Very well, do as thee pleases,” said Elihu, sharply; “I think it’s too damp, but I suppose thee’ll do as thee chooses.” Then he knocked the ashes out of his pipe and went into the house without another word, shutting the door carefully behind him.
“I don’t know why he doesn’t want me to go,” said Patty; “it’s a lovely day for a walk. Wait till I go in and speak to him, maybe he’ll change his mind;” and she followed her father into the house.
“I can’t bear this any longer;” said Tom to himself. “I’ll have it over this afternoon, or I’ll never come here again. I’ll ask her to be my wife, and if the worst comes to the worst I’ll ship for another cruise.”
Presently Patty came out of the house again. She had thrown a scarf over her shoulders. “Is thee ready to go, Thomas?” said she.
“Yes; I’m ready.”
There was very little talk between them as they walked on side by side, for Tom’s heart was too full of that which was upon his mind to say much with his lips; so they went down the road into the hollow, past the old mill, over the bridge that crossed Stony Brook just beyond, up the hill on the other side, past Whiteley’s farm-house, and so to the further crest of the hill that overlooked Rocky Creek Valley beyond. There they stopped and stood beside the fence at the roadside, looking down into the valley beneath them. It was a fair sight that lay spread out before their eyes – field beyond field, farm-house, barn and orchard, all bathed in the soft yellow sunshine, saving here and there where a cloud cast a purple shadow that moved slowly across the hills and down into the valleys.
“Isn’t it beautiful?” said Patty, as she leaned against the rough fence, looking out across the valley, while the wind stirred the hair at her cheeks and temples.
“Yes; it is;” said Tom, “it’s a goodly world to live in, Patty.”
Then silence fell between them.
“There’s the old Naylor homestead,” said Patty at last.
“Yes; I see it,” said Tom, shortly, glancing as he spoke in the direction which she pointed. Then, after a while, he continued, “What a queer man Isaac Naylor is!”
“I don’t see anything queer about him,” said Patty, looking down at the toe of her shoe.
“Well, I never saw a man like him.”
“He is a very good worthy man, and everybody respects him,” said Patty, warmly.
“Oh! I don’t deny that,” said Tom, with a pang at his heart.
“Thee couldn’t truthfully deny it if thee would, Thomas,” said Patty.
“I’m only a rough sea-faring man,” said Tom. “I don’t know that any one respects me very much.” He waited a moment, but Patty said nothing; then he went on again:
“For all that, I’d rather be a man of thirty at thirty, and not as dead to all things as though I was a man of eighty. Isaac Naylor is more like a man of eighty than he is like one of thirty. No one would take him to be only five years older than I am.”
“I don’t know any man that I respect as much as I do Isaac Naylor,” said Patty. “I don’t like to hear thee talk against him as thee does. He has never spoken ill of thee.”
“Thee need never be afraid of my saying anything more against him,” said Tom, bitterly; “I see that thee likes him more than I thought thee did. I might have known it too, from the way that he has been visiting thee during this last month or two.”
“Why shouldn’t he visit me, Thomas?”
“The Lord knows!”
She made no answer to this, and presently Tom spoke again.
“I’m going off to sea before long, Patty,” said he, for it seemed to him just then that the sea was a fit place for him to be. Patty made no answer to this; she was picking busily at the fringe of the scarf that hung about her shoulders.
“How soon is thee going, Thomas?” said she at last.
“Oh! I don’t know; in three or four weeks, I guess. It doesn’t matter, does it?”
Patty made no reply.
Tom was leaning on the fence, looking out across the valley, but seeing nothing. His mind was in a whirl, for he was saying unto himself, “Now is the time, be a man, speak your heart boldly, for this is the opportunity!”
Twice he tried to bring himself to speak, and twice his heart failed him. The third time that he strove, he broke the silence.
“Patty,” said he. His heart was beating thickly, but there was no turning back now, for the first word had been spoken.
Patty must have had an inkling of what was in Tom’s mind, for her bosom was rising and falling quickly.
“Patty,” said Tom again.
“What is it, Thomas?” said she, in a trembling voice, and without raising her head.
Tom was picking nervously at the rough bark upon the fence-rail near to him, but he was looking at Patty.
“Thee knows why I have been coming to see thee all this time, doesn’t thee, Patty?”
“No,” whispered Patty.
“Thee doesn’t know?”
“No.”
It seemed to Tom as though the beating of his heart would smother him: “Because, – because I love thee, Patty,” said he.
Patty’s head sunk lower and lower, but she neither moved nor spoke.
Then Tom said again, “I love thee, Patty.”
He waited for a while and then he said: “Won’t thee speak to me, Patty?”
“What does thee want me to say?” whispered she.
“Does thee love me?”
Silence.
“Does thee love me?”
Tom was standing very close to her as he spoke; when she answered it was hardly above her breath, but low as the whisper was he caught it —
“Yes.”
Ah me! those days have gone by now, and I am an old man of four score years and more, but even yet my old heart thrills at the remembrance of this that I here write. Manifold troubles and griefs have fallen upon me betwixt then and now; yet, I can say, when one speaks to me of the weariness of this world and of the emptiness of things within it, “Surely, life is a pleasant thing, when it holds such joys in store for us as this, – the bliss of loving and of being loved.”
Half an hour afterward, Tom was walking down the road toward the old mill-house, and in his hand he held the hand of his darling – his first love – and life was very beautiful to him.
CHAPTER III
NOW, although the good people of Eastcaster were very glad to welcome Tom Granger home again whenever he returned from a cruise, at the same time they looked upon him with a certain wariness, or shyness, for they could not but feel that he was not quite one of themselves.
Now-a-days one sees all kinds of strange people; the railroad brings them, – young men who sell dry-goods, books and what not. They have traveled all over the country and have, or think that they have, a world more of knowledge about things in general than other people who are old