John Ward, Preacher | Page 6

lantern through the lilacs and syringas warned
them that some one was coming, and in another moment the Misses
Woodhouse and their nephew stepped across the square of light.
Miss Deborah and Miss Ruth were quite unconscious that they gave the
impression of carrying Gifford about with them, rather than of being
supported by him, for each little lady had passed a determined arm
through one of his, and instead of letting her small hand, incased in its
black silk mitt, rest upon his sleeve, pressed it firmly to her breast.
Ashurst was a place where friendships grew in simplicity as well as
strength with the years, and because these three people had been most
of the morning at the rectory, arranging flowers, or moving furniture
about, or helping with some dainty cooking, and then had gone to the
church at noon for the wedding, they saw no reason why they should
not come again in the evening. So the sisters had put on their
second-best black silks, and, summoning Gifford, had walked through
the twilight to the rectory. Miss Deborah Woodhouse had a genius for
economy, which gave her great pleasure and involved but slight extra
expense to the household, and she would have felt it a shocking
extravagance to have kept on the dress she had worn to the wedding.
Miss Ruth, who was an artist, the sisters said, and fond of pretty things,
reluctantly followed her example.
They sat down now on the rectory porch, and began to talk, in their
eager, delicate little voices, of the day's doings. They scarcely noticed
that their nephew and Lois had gone into the fragrant dusk of the
garden. It did not interest them that the young people should wish to
see, as Gifford had said, how the sunset light lingered behind the hills;
and when they had exhausted the subject of the wedding, Miss Ruth
was anxious to ask the rector about his greenhouse and the relative
value of leaf mould and bone dressing, so they gave no thought to the
two who still delayed among the flowers.
This was not surprising. Gifford and Lois had known each other all
their lives. They had quarreled and made up with kisses, and later on
had quarreled and made up without the kisses, but they had always felt

themselves the most cordial and simple friends. Then had come the
time when Gifford must go to college, and Lois had only seen him in
his short vacations; and these gradually became far from pleasant.
"Gifford has changed," she said petulantly. "He is so polite to me," she
complained to Helen; not that Gifford had ever been rude, but he had
been brotherly.
He once asked her for a rose from a bunch she had fastened in her dress.
"Why don't you pick one yourself, Giff?" she said simply; and
afterwards, with a sparkle of indignant tears in her eyes and with a
quick impatience which made her an amusing copy of her father, she
said to Helen, "I suppose he meant to treat me as though I was some
fine young lady. Why can't he be just the old Giff?" And when he came
back from Europe, she declared he was still worse.
Yet even in their estrangement they united in devotion to Helen. It was
to Helen they appealed in all their differences, which were many, and
her judgment was final; Lois never doubted it, even though Helen
generally thought Gifford was in the right. So now, when her cousin
had left her, she was at least sure of the young man's sympathy.
She was glad that he was going to practice in Lockhaven; he would be
near Helen, and make the new place less lonely for her, she said, once.
And Helen had smiled, as though she could be lonely where John was!
They walked now between the borders, where old-fashioned flowers
crowded together, towards the stone bench. This was a slab of
sandstone, worn and flaked by weather, and set on two low posts; it
leaned a little against the trunk of a silver-poplar tree, which served for
a back, and it looked like an altar ready for the sacrifice. The thick
blossoming grass, which the mower's scythe had been unable to reach,
grew high about the corners; three or four stone steps led up to it, but
they had been laid so long ago they were sunken at one side or the other,
and almost hidden by moss and wild violets. Quite close to the bench a
spring bubbled out of the hill-side, and ran singing through a hollowed
locust log, which was mossy green where the water had over-flowed,
with a musical drip, upon the grass underneath.

They stood a moment looking towards the west, where a golden dust