The Advocate

"You goin'?" called Isabel Wilde from the road, to Ardelia, sitting forlornly

on the front steps.

It was seven o'clock of a wonderful August morning, with all the bloom of

summer and the lull of fall. Isabel was a dark, strong young creature who

walked with her head in the air, and Ardelia, pretty and frail and perfect

in her own small way, looked like a child in comparison. Isabel had been

down to carry a frosted cake to her little niece Ellen, for Ellen's share of

the picnic at Poole's Woods. It was Fairfax day, when once a year all

Fairfax went to the spot where the first settlers drank of the "b'ilin'

spring" on their way to a clearing.

"You goin'?" she called again, imperiously, and Ardelia answered, as if

from some unwillingness:--

"I guess so."

"Now what do you want to say that for?" rang her mother's voice from an

upper window, where, trusting to her distance from the road, she thought

she could speak her mind without Isabel's hearing. "You know you ain't.

Oliver's gone off to work in the acre lot."

Isabel had heard. She stood regarding Ardelia thoughtfully, her black

brows drawn together and her teeth set upon one full lip.

"Ardelia," she called softly, after that moment of consideration.

"What is it?" came Ardelia's unwilling voice, the tone of one who has

emotion to conceal.

"Come here a minute."

Ardelia rose slowly and came down the path. She was a wisp of a

creature, perfectly fashioned and very appealing in her blond prettiness.

Isabel eyed her sharply and judged from certain signs that she had at

least meant to go. She had on her light-blue dimity with the Hamburg

frills, and her sorrowful face indicated that she had donned it to no avail.

"What time you goin', 'Delia?" asked Isabel quietly, over the fence.

Ardelia could not look at her. She stood with bent head, busily arranging

a spray of coreopsis that fell out over the path, and Isabel was sure her

eyes were wet.

"I don't know," she said evasively; "maybe not very early."

Isabel was looking at her tenderly. It was not a personal tenderness so

much as a softness born out of peculiar circumstance. She knew exactly

why she was sorry for Ardelia in a way no one else could be. Yet there

seemed to be no present means of helping her.

"Well," she said, turning away, "maybe I'll see you there. Say, 'Delia!" A

sudden thought was brightening her eyes to even a kinder glow. "If you

haven't planned any other way, s'pose you go with us. Jim Bryant's goin'

to take me, and he'd admire to have you, too. What say, 'Delia?"

Ardelia's delicate figure straightened, and now she looked at Isabel. There

was something new in her gentle glance. It looked like dignity.

"I'm much obliged to you, Isabel," she returned stiffly. "If I go, I've

arranged to go another way."

"All right," said Isabel. "Well, I guess I'll be gettin' along."

But before she was half-way to the turning of the road she heard Mrs.

Drake's shrill voice from the upper window:--

"He's begun to dig, 'Delia. Oliver's begun to dig. He won't stop for no

picnics, I can tell ye that."

It seemed to Isabel as if the world were very much out of tune for

delicate girls like 'Delia who wanted pleasure and could not have it. She

paused a moment at the crossing of the roads, the frown of consideration

again upon her brow. "Makes me mad," she said to herself, but half

absently, as if that were not the issue at all. Then she turned her back on

her own home-road and the house where her starched dress was awaiting

her, and where Jim Bryant would presently call to take her to Poole's

Woods, and walked briskly down the other way.

Isabel stopped at the acre field, but she had no idea of what she meant to

say when she was there. Oliver was digging potatoes, as she knew he

would be, and she recognized the bend of the back, the steady stress of

one who toiled too long and too unrestingly, so that his very pose spoke

like a lifelong purpose. She stood still for a moment or two before he saw

her, gazing at him. Old tenderness awoke in her, old angers also. She

remembered how he had made her suffer in the obstinate course of his

own will, and how free she had felt when at last she had broken their

engagement and seen him drift under Ardelia's charm. But he would

always mean something to her more than other men, in a fashion quite

peculiar to himself. She had agonized too much over him. She had

protected him too long against the faults of his own nature, and now she

could not be content unless, for his sake, she protected Ardelia a little

also. Suddenly he lifted himself to rest his back, and saw her. They stood

confronting each other, each with a sense of familiarity and pain. Oliver

was a handsome fellow, tall, splendidly made, with rich, warm coloring.

He looked kindly, but stolidly set in his own way.

"That you, Isabel?" he asked awkwardly.

They had met only for a passing word since the breaking of their troth.

"Yes," said Isabel briefly. "I've got to speak to you. Wait a minute. I'll

come in by the bars, and you meet me under the old cherry. It'll be shady

there."

She turned back to the bars, ducked deftly under, and, holding her skirts

from the rough land, made her way to the cherry in the corner of the lot.

Oliver wonderingly followed. She felt again that particular anger she

reserved for him, when she saw him stalking along, hoe in hand. It was a

settled tread, with little spring in it, and for the moment it seemed to her

a prophecy of what it would be when he was an old man, with a staff

instead of the hoe. She was waiting for him under the tree.

"Oliver," she began, speaking out of an impulse hardly yet approved by

judgment, "you goin' to the picnic?"

Oliver looked at her in wonder.

"Why, no," said he slowly.

"Didn't you promise 'Delia you'd go?"

"No, I guess not. I said mebbe I'd be round if I had time, but I ain't found

the time. These 'taters have got to be dug."

The red had surged into Isabel's full cheeks. She looked an eloquent

remonstrance.

"Oliver," she said impetuously, "'Delia's sittin' on the front steps, waitin'

for you to come. She'll be terrible disappointed if you put her aside like

this."

Oliver took off his hat and passed a hand over his forehead. She noticed,

as she had a hundred times, how fine his hair was at the roots, and was

angry again because he would not, with his exasperating ways, let any

woman love him as she might. He seemed to have nothing to say, but she

knew the picture of lone 'Delia sitting on the steps was far from moving

him. It did cause him an honest trouble, for he was kind; but not for that

would he postpone his work.

"Oliver," she continued, "did you ever know what 'twas that made me tell

you we must break off bein'--engaged?"

He was looking at her earnestly. His own mind seemed returning to a past

ache and loss.