Page:Saxe Holm's Stories, Series Two.djvu/263

Rh brother as she was to him a sister, would have made of me a Cain.

Jim's nature was too thoroughly sweet for resentment!

"You are right, my dear fellow," he answered, "I should only be in the way."

Again I rode a day and a night and a day in the ceaseless din of the cars, with one question whirling back and forth and back and forth in my restless brain. The spring was just opening. All through New England's lovely meadows the apple-trees were rosy pink and white. The sweet bridal colors flashed past my eyes, mile after mile, in significant beauty; my life, too, had had a long winter; I felt the thrill of its coming spring.

It was near sunset when I reached the town now so dear, which had looked so dismal and wretched to me when I first saw it six years before. I walked slowly toward the parsonage. For the first time since I left Jim's rooms, a misgiving forced itself upon me, whether I had done wisely in coming unannounced, and I dreaded the first moment of meeting. I need not have done so. It was true and right I should lose no second's time in hasting to Ally; and the right always arranges itself. A few rods from the parsonage was a clump of tall firs. I paused behind these and gazed earnestly at the house. "Oh," I thought, "if Ally would only come out!" Involuntarily I laid my hand on the tourmaline, and recalled Ally's childish fancies