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You'll hev an easier time of it, Brother Gideon, than poor Marvin Hiler had," she continued, suppressing her tears with a certain astringency that took the place of her lost pride; "but the Lord wills that some should be tried and some not." "But I am not going to marry Meely Parsons," said Gideon quietly. The widow took her foot from the rocker. "Not marry Meely!" she repeated vaguely.
"It's a hard trial, Sister Hiler," said Gideon, "but the Lord has His appointed time." Familiar as consolation by vague quotation was to Sister Hiler, there was an occult sympathy in the tone in which this was offered that lifted her for an instant out of her narrower self. She raised her eyes to his.
In the clearing some trees that had been felled but not taken away added to the general incompleteness. Something of this unfinished character clung to the Widow Hiler and asserted itself in her three children, one of whom was consistently posthumous.
Be'n practicin', I reckon, at the meetin'." A slight color came into his cheek. "My place is not there, Sister Hiler," he said gently; "it's for those with the gift o' tongues. I go forth only a common laborer in the vineyard."
If it is, it is the Lord's will. But I do not marry Meely because my life and my ways henceforth must lie far beyond her sphere of strength. I oughtn't to drag a young inexperienced soul with me to battle and struggle in the thorny paths that I must tread." "I reckon you know your own mind," said Sister Hiler grimly.
But the Widow Hiler the next morning, coming from the spring, found no abstraction or preoccupation in the soft eyes of Gideon Deane as he suddenly appeared before her, and gently relieved her of the bucket she was carrying. A quick flash of color over her brow and cheek-bone, as if a hot iron had passed there, and a certain astringent coyness, would have embarrassed any other man than him.
Surprised once more into recognizing this devotion, Sister Hiler abruptly arrested her monologue. "Well, if you ain't the handiest man I ever seed about a house!" "Am I?" said Gideon, with suddenly sparkling eyes. "Do you really think so?" "I do." "Then you don't know how glad I am."
"If you let me help you, Sister Hiler," said the young man with a cheerfulness that belied any overwhelming heart affection, and awakened in the widow a feminine curiosity as to his real feelings to Meely. But her further questioning was met with a frank, amiable, and simple brevity that was as puzzling as the most artful periphrase of tact.
Later that evening Selby Hiler woke up in his little truckle bed, listening to the rising midnight wind, which in his childish fancy he confounded with the sound of voices that came through the open door of the living-room.
It must be confessed that for the rest of the evening Sister Hiler rather lent herself to this idea, possibly from the fact that it temporarily obliterated the children, and quite removed her from any responsibility in the unpicturesque household.
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