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Lois was not the only one who heard of Dick's plan of leaving Ashurst with mingled joy and dread. Gifford knew that Mr. Forsythe was going away, and seeing the distress in Lois's face, in these sad days, he put it down to grief at his departure. It was easier to give himself this pain than to reflect that Lois was trembling with anxiety about Mr. Denner, and was still full of alarm for Mrs.
Miss Crosby smiled. "Do you like it? I did it this summer. Are you interested in drawing?" she asked. "Oh, yes!" Lois's tone was surprised as if any one could doubt such a well known fact. "Then you must be Lois Farwell," she said. "Why, I am." Miss Crosby's smile broadened. "I thought you were; you see Mrs. Baird told me " she hesitated, "well it doesn't matter what.
At five o'clock he arose, and sat down in his dressing-gown at Lois's very untidy and very small writing-desk, and wrote a letter on her notepaper. The early morning was lovely; it was celestial. "DEAR DAVIDS," the letter began. That would annoy the fellow, who liked the address respectful. "Dear Davids, I have decided to join the Army, and therefore cannot proceed further with your commission.
As his ringing voice subsided, there fell a perfect silence, then a very roar of cheering filled it, and the hemlock rafters rang. And I saw the colour fly to Lois's face like a bright ensign breaking from its staff and opening in flower-like beauty.
They came up at last, the cart empty, and drying for the day's work after its morning's scrubbing, Lois's pock-marked face all in a glow with trying to keep Barney awake. She grew quite red with pleasure at seeing Holmes, but went on quickly as the men began to talk.
Lois's vivid eye caught the full meaning of the woman beside him. The face hurt her: not fair, as Polston called it: vapid and cruel. She was dressed in yellow: the colour seemed jeering and mocking to the girl's sensitive instinct, keenly alive to every trifle. She did not know that it is the colour of shams, and that women like this are the most deadly of shams.
The sight of this vast pathetic effort of the disinherited towards gaiety and distraction and the mood of spring, intensified the vague sadness in George due to the race-crowd, Lois's silence, and the lack of news about the competition. At length Lois said, scowling no doubt involuntarily: "I think I'd better tell you now. Irene Wheeler's committed suicide. Shot herself."
Max kept his nose under Lois's hand, and the horse stumbled once over a stone that had rolled from the broken foundation and hidden itself beneath a dock. The mushrooms had opened their little shining brown umbrellas, as Lois had said, on the very hearth, and she stooped down to gather them and put them in her basket of sweet grass.
When he was through, there had been tears in Lois's eyes, and her bosom was still heaving. "Thank you," she said simply, and the rest of the drive was in silence.
Somehow, the morbid fancies were gone; she was keenly alive; the homely real life of this huckster had fired her, touched her blood with a more vital stimulus than any tale of crusader. As she went down the crooked maze of dingy lanes, she could hear Lois's little cracked bell far off: it sounded like a Christmas song to her.
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