"You better not wait," answered Amanda, almost passionately, her thin hair blowing about her temples. "You better go right back. I'd ruther do it myself; I'd a good deal ruther."
Caleb turned about. He took a few steps, then stopped, and called hesitatingly over his shoulder, "I thought maybe I'd come an' set a spell to-night."
Then, indeed, Amanda felt her resolution, crack and quiver. "I guess you better come some other night," she said, in a steady voice, though her face was wet with tears. And Caleb walked away, never once looking back. Amanda stayed only to wipe her eyes, saying meanwhile to her sorry self, "Oh, I dunno how I can get along! I dunno!" Then she hurried back to the house, to find the kettle merrily singing, and Aunt Melissa standing at the kitchen cupboard, looking critically up and down the shelves.
"If you've got two sets o' them little gem-pans, you might lend me one," she remarked; and Amanda agreed, not knowing what she gave.
The supper was eaten and the dishes were washed, Aunt Melissa meantime keeping a strict watch from the window.
"Is it time for Kelup?" she asked, again and again; and finally she confronted the guilty Amanda with the challenge, "Do you think Kelup ain't comin'?"
"I--guess not," quavered Amanda, her cheeks scarlet, and her small, pathetic hands trembling. She was not more used to _finesse_ than to heroic action.
"Do you s'pose there's any on 'em sick down to young Nat's?" asked Aunt Melissa; and Amanda was obliged to take recourse again to her shielding "I guess not." But at length Uncle Hiram drove up in the comfortable carry-all; and though his determined spouse detained him more than three-quarters of an hour, sitting beside him like a portly Rhadamanthus, and scanning the horizon for the Caleb who never came, he finally rebelled, shook the reins, and drove off, Aunt Melissa meantime screaming over her shoulder certain vigorous declarations, which evidently began with the phrase, "You tell Kelup--"
Then Amanda went into the house, and sat down by the window in the gathering dusk, surveying the wreckage of her dream. The dream was even more precious in that it had grown so old. Caleb was a part of her every-day life, and for fifteen years Saturday had brought a little festival, wherein the commonplace man with brown eyes had been high-priest. He would not come to-night. Perhaps he never would come again. She knew what it was to feel widowed.