Page:Scarlet Sister Mary (1928).pdf/110

 pretending she did not feel things that were breaking her heart. Even the plantation seemed different. Those hot fields, spread out before her eyes, looked silent and cruel. They offered her no hope for better things, no way of escaping sorrow.

She had been married less than a year, yet cold fear made her heart shiver when she thought of July and the change that had come over him this summer. As soon as first dark came he would go, leaving her alone, sleepless, wretched, to spend the long lagging nights as best she could. Misery dimmed the sunshine, blackened the shade, blighted her pleasure in the flowers and trees and in all the things she loved best.

To-day, instead of being noisy and gay with fun, the plantation Quarters was silent as on Sunday. Everybody who could raise the price of a round-trip ticket had gone to town, on the Saturday excursion. Men, women, old, young, saints, sinners, all had got up before dawn and walked the long miles to the landing where the excursion boat stopped to take them aboard.

The only people left in the Quarters were to a sick, or too young, or too old, and these were seeking shade from the sun-hot which beat down strong, burning up the smells of pig-pen and goats and cattle raised by the damp morning.