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And pretty soon it'll eat us and eat Weedie too." He went in and up the stairs and Lydia fancied she heard the tearing of papers in his room. The dry branch has come alive. The young Jeff Lydia had known through Farvie was here, miraculously full of hope and laughter. Jeff was as different after that day as a man could be if he had been buried and revived and cast his grave-clothes off.
He hasn't written me for years." She looked a baffling number of things now, voluntarily pathetic, a little scornful, as if she washed her hands gladly of the whole affair. "Farvie thinks," said Lydia recklessly, "that you haven't written to him." "How could I?" asked Esther, in a quick rebuttal which actually had a convincing sound, "when he didn't write to me?" "But he was in prison."
"No," said Lydia, rather drearily, "I couldn't. Do you think Farvie heard?" "I think not. He didn't seem to." But it was with redoubled solicitude that they threw their joint energies into making supper inviting, so that the colonel might at least get a shred of easement out of a pleasant meal.
She ran up to the colonel, and pulled him away from Jeff. It seemed as if she were about to make him dance, too. "Don't bother him, Farvie," said she. "He's out of prison! he's out of prison!" She had said it, the cruel word, and Jeff knew she could not possibly have ventured it if she did not see in him something fortunate and free. "Jeff!" said the colonel.
In the shed they stood looking out at the back door through the rolling field, where at last a fringe of feathery yellow made the horizon line. "What's at the end of the field, Farvie?" Lydia asked. "The river," said he. "Nothing but the river."
"And I'll stand up to it. Shake hands, Lydia." "No," said Lydia, "I don't want to shake hands." She folded the scarf again about her, tighter, it seemed, than it was before. "You and I don't need signs and ceremonies. Now I'm going back and read to Farvie. You go to walk, Jeff. Walk a mile. Walk a dozen miles. If we had horses we'd get on 'em bareback and ride and ride."
The colonel had thought so much about his old age that now he was near saying: "You know I haven't so very many years," but he held on to himself. "He's got to go alone," said Anne. "But he'll come back." "Yes," said Lydia, from the habit they had learned of heartening Farvie, "he'll come back." But she was hotly resolving that he should learn his duty and stay here.
There was nothing ever more warm and grateful than Lydia's acceptances and her trust in the bright promise of the new. Anne didn't do that kind of thing. She hesitated at thresholds and looked forward, not distrustfully but gravely, into dim interiors. "Farvie, dear," said Lydia, "I love it just as much now as I could in a hundred years. It's our house. I feel as if I'd been born in it."
Lydia, at sight of him, laid down her cloth and came to meet him. Neither did she think whether they were alone, though she did remember afterward that Farvie had gone into the orchard for his walk. Seeing Jeff's face, she knew some mortal hurt was at work within him, and like a child, she went to him, and Jeff put his face down on her cheek, and his cheek, she felt, was wet.
"Well," said Farvie, with a determined cheerfulness, "I guess the girls'll agree to that. Middle West?" "No," said Jeffrey, "the West if there is any West left. Somewhere where there's space." His voice fell, on that last word. It held wonder even. Was there such a thing, this man of four walls seemed to ask, as space? "You'd want to go alone," said Anne softly.
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