But they had much to say to each other, and, finally, Samson broke the
silence: "Did ye think I wasn't a-comin' back, Sally?" he questioned, softly.
At that moment, he had no realization that his tongue had ever
fashioned smoother phrases. And she, too, who had been making war on
crude idioms, forgot, as she answered: "Ye done said ye was comin'." Then, she added a happy lie: "I knowed
plumb shore ye'd do hit."
After a while, she drew away, and said, slowly: "Samson, I've done kept the old rifle-gun ready fer ye. Ye said ye'd
need it bad when ye come back, an' I've took care of it."
She stood there holding it, and her voice dropped almost to a whisper
as she added: "It's been a lot of comfort to me sometimes, because it was your'n. I
knew if ye stopped keerin' fer me, ye wouldn't let me keep it--an' as
long as I had it, I--" She broke off, and the fingers of one hand
touched the weapon caressingly.
The man knew many things now that he had not known when he said good-
by. He recognized in the very gesture with which she stroked the old
walnut stock the pathetic heart-hunger of a nature which had been
denied the fulfillment of its strength, and which had been bestowing on
an inanimate object something that might almost have been the stirring
of the mother instinct for a child. Now, thank God, her life should
never lack anything that a flood-tide of love could bring to it. He
bent his head in a mute sort of reverence.
After a long while, they found time for the less-wonderful things.
"I got your letter," he said, seriously, "and I came at once." As he
began to speak of concrete facts, he dropped again into ordinary
English, and did not know that he had changed his manner of speech.
For an instant, Sally looked up into his face, then with a sudden
laugh, she informed him: "I can say, 'isn't,' instead of, 'hain't,' too. How did you like my
writing?"
He held her off at arms' length, and looked at her pridefully, but
under his gaze her eyes fell, and her face flushed with a sudden
diffidence and a new shyness of realization. She wore a calico dress,
but at her throat was a soft little bow of ribbon. She was no longer
the totally unself-conscious wood-nymph, though as natural and
instinctive as in the other days. Suddenly, she drew away from him a
little, and her hands went slowly to her breast, and rested there. She
was fronting a great crisis, but, in the first flush of joy, she had
forgotten it. She had spent lonely nights struggling for rudiments; she
had sought and fought to refashion herself, so that, if he came, he
need not be ashamed of her. And now he had come, and, with a terrible
clarity and distinctness, she realized how pitifully little she had
been able to accomplish. Would she pass muster? She stood there before
him, frightened, self-conscious and palpitating, then her voice came in
a whisper: "Samson, dear, I'm not holdin' you to any promise. Those things we
said were a long time back. Maybe we'd better forget 'em now, and begin
all over again."