Page:Further Chronicles of Avonlea (1920).djvu/302

270 Solomon’s mule,” I said, for I would say it. “He's just a common fellow, and yet he thinks he’s good enough for my beauty.”

“Don’t talk about Mark,” she pleaded again. “I mean to be a good, faithful wife to him. But I’m my own woman yet — yet — for just a few more sweet hours, and I want to give them to him. The last hours of my maidenhood — they must belong to him.”

So she talked of him, me sitting there and holding her, with her lovely hair hanging down over my arm, and my heart aching so for her that it hurt bitter. She didn't feel as bad as I did, because she’d made up her mind what to do and was resigned. She was going to marry Mark Foster, but her heart was in France, in that grave nobody knew of, where the Huns had buried Owen Blair — if they had buried him at all. And she went over all they had been to each other, since they were mites of babies, going to school together and meaning, even then, to be married when they grew up; and the first words of love he’d said to her, and what she’d dreamed and hoped for. The only thing she didn’t bring up was the time he thrashed Mark Foster for bringing her apples. She never mentioned Mark’s name; it was all Owen — Owen — and how he looked, and what might have been, if he hadn’t gone off to the awful war and got shot. And there was me, holding her