Page:Saxe Holm's Stories, Series Two.djvu/108

98 "I stood it over at your camp-meeting as long as I could, and then I came out. If I 'd have dreamed that you 'd left a window open in all your house you would n't have caught me over there at all, I can tell you."

It was arranged that Hi should shoe Jerry as soon as it was light in the morning. And John would be off for Deerway by six o'clock, for there was mowing to be done that day which could not be put off. Then John went to bed, and as he settled himself to sleep, he said:— "Well, that 's the end of that."

But the end was not yet.

Two weeks later, as John was driving Tom and Jerry leisurely along the road past the Goodenows' farm-house, just at sunset one night, he heard his name called loudly from the piazza, and saw Luke Goodenow running down the pathway toward him. John felt, rather than saw, that the piazza was rilled with people. He never passed the house without having a secret conscious wonder whether the blue-eyed, yellow-haired girl would be in sight; but he had never seen her since the night of the camp-meeting. Now he felt sure that she was on the piazza, for the whole family had gathered there, to look at the sunset, which was one rippling wave of fiery gold from the western horizon nearly to the zenith. John did not turn his head, but reined up his horses and sat waiting for Luke.