“_Now_” (fumbling with his shabby headgear), “I was wishful fer to speak with ye before ennybody else came down. Leastways, Mary Ann, she’s in the kitchen, but don’t count, bein’ busy an’ out of the way.”
Hetty smiled languidly. Her eyes were heavy-lidded; her motions slow for her. She had lain all night, staring into the blackness above her, now crying to a deaf heaven to show her a plain path for her feet, now trembling with ecstatic anguish in the recollection of the interview that opened a vista of Eden she yet dared not enter.
“Come what may, he has called me darling!” she was thinking for the hundredth time, as the interruption came.
“What is it, Homer? Are your flowers all right?”
He ventured, after a glance at his feet, to step upon the unbroken breadths of Brussels.
“_Now_—I was up a tree in the orchard las’ night. An’ Mr. Gilchris’—the _young_ one—and Mr. Wayt, they were a-talkin’ on the groun’ under the tree——”
Hetty wheeled upon him with blazing eyes and cheeks.
“You were in the orchard! In what tree? When? But no!” Her excitement subsided as quickly as it had arisen. “You were in the house when I came in. Go on!” She drew a long breath.
Homer twiddled his thumbs in the crown of his cap. His speech could never be hurried. If urged to talk fast, he was dumb.
“Now, I was up in that big tree where the picter was painted. Mr. Gilchris’—the young Mr. Gilchris’—he war a-lyin’ onto the grass when I came along. ’Twar after you had gone upstairs—nigh onto ten o’clock, I guess, or may be nine—I aint certain. I’d saw the same light, an’, for all them boys ken say, I’ve been saw it many a time——”
“Never mind the light.” Hetty said it patiently. “Tell me how you happened to climb the tree.”
“Now, Mr. Gilchris’—the young gentleman—he spoke very civil an’ kind to me, an’ we war talkin’ quite a spell, when I heerd Mr. Wayt a-comin’, an’ I clumb the tree so’s he wouldn’t see me, an’ may be go fur me, you know. An’ while I war in the tree I heerd him a-tellin’ Mr. Gilchris’—I meantersay the young Mr. Gilchris’—how he’d sot up ’tell daybreak, four o’clock Sat’day night, a figurin’ onto his sermon what he preached on Sunday——”
“Yes, ma’am! He war talkin’ very high Scotch, mos’ly like he does all times, ’specially to comp’ny-folks, but I got the sense of that much. He said as how he an’ the thunder-storm they figured up the sermon together, near’s I could make out. An’ Mr. Gilchris’—the young gentleman—he said precious little—an’ Mr. Wayt, he splurged out considerable ’bout seein’ the sun rise an’ so forth, an’ ’bout his headache comin’ on an’ a-goin off with the sun. An’ then the two of ’em walked off quite frien’ly, an’ soon’s as they was out o’ sight, I lighted out and come home.”