“My soul!” said Temperance, and took a flight across the kitchen, lifting the heavy pot with one sweep from the fire to the floor. The dome quivered, rose a fraction and collapsed in a mass of rosy foam.
The crisis was past, and just then the expected knock came.
“There!” she said, “that jell’s done for! I’ll have to stand palavering with some agent chap or book-canvasser with my jell a-setting there gettin’ all muddied up.”
This reflection bore her company to the front door, which she opened with an air of calm surprise. Miss Tribbey knew her manners.
“Well, I declare!” she said. “Have you been here long?”
“No—came this very minute,” said Sidney in his soft, penetrating voice.
“Oh, the liar!” said Miss Tribbey to herself, scandalized.
“It’s beautiful here,” he continued. “That field of yellow grain there is worth a journey to see.”
(“Poor crittur,” Miss Tribbey said in relating this afterwards. “Poor, ignorant crittur! Not knowing it’s a burning, heartsick shame to see grain that premature ripe with the hay standing in win’rows in the field, before his eyes.”)
“Ahem!” said Miss Tribbey, her visitor showing signs of relapsing again into that reverie which had made the interval of waiting seem as nothing to him, unconscious as he was of the narrowly averted tragedy with Miss Tribbey’s fruit.
But face to face with her he was too sensitive not to recognize her impatience with his dallying mood. He roused himself and turned towards her with a frank and boyish smile.
“I’m bothering you,” he said, “and doubtless keeping you from something important.”
“I’m making jell,” said she briefly, her attitude growing tense.
“Have you heard Mr. Lansing speak of Sidney Martin?” he asked. “In reference to his coming to stay here this summer? I’m Sidney Martin, and I want to come, if it is convenient to receive me, the beginning of next week, and——”
“Here,” said Sidney, a little embarrassed.
“Yes,” said Sidney, looking at her with the confidence in his eyes of one who, loving his fellow-creatures more than life, expects and anticipates their love in return; one does not often see this expression, but one often sees the residuum left after the ignorance it bespeaks has been melled and mingled by experience.