Again there was silence on the road. It was too early yet for any insect life, and the sparrows did not fly so far from the houses, but
"Above in the wind was the swallow Chasing itself at its own wild will."
The flush for a space died out of her cheeks. As she continued on her way the snake-fence changed to a neat board one, that in turn gave place to one of ornate wire. In the middle of this was a little gate, which she passed; then came a wider five-barred gate through which she entered, and found her way to the rear of a large white frame house, standing in an old apple orchard.
Her steps were bent to the "cook house," an erection of unplaned pine boards, where, in summer, the kitchen-work of Mrs. Deans' household was carried on. Before Myron Holder crossed its threshold, she sent one long look over to the left, where, leafless yet and gray--save where a cedar made a sullen blotch of green--the trees of Mr. Deans' woodland bounded her vision in a semi-circular sweep. As she turned her to the doorway, a new expression had found place within her eyes--upon her lips--poignant but indecipherable. For resolution, resignation, and despair are sometimes so analogous as to be inseparable.
"A treasure of the memory, a joy unutterable."
"Her tears fell with the dews at even; Her tears fell ere the dews were dried. She could not look at the sweet heaven Either at morn or eventide."
Myron Holder's father was Jed Holder, the broom-maker. His death occurred when Myron was eighteen years old. He had clung to his quaint occupation to the last, after factory-made brooms stood even at the store doors in Jamestown.
His fortunes had fallen off sadly in the last few years of his life, but he worked away as steadily at his trade as in the old days, when, looking from his door, his eyes were met by the mast-like masses of a Kentish hop orchard. He had planted hopvines all about the fence of his little house in Jamestown. They clambered up the sides of the house, twined insinuatingly about the disdainful sunflowers, and throwing their tendrils abroad from the roots wound round and round the tall stalks of grass, weighing them down with the burden of their unsought embrace.
Little Myron was often impressed with the truth that a single leaf broken from a growing hopvine kills the whole spray. She learned to "pick up her feet," as her father expressed it, and step daintily between the wandering vines, so that no slurring footstep might injure them.