John Ward, Preacher | Page 7

seemed blown across the sky, up into the darkness; then Lois took her
seat upon the bench. "When do you think you will get off, Giff?" she
said.
"I'm not quite sure," he answered; he was sitting on one of the lower
steps, and leaning on his elbow in the grass, so that he might see her
face. "I suppose it will take a fortnight to arrange everything."
"I'm sorry for that," Lois said, disappointedly. "I thought you would go
in a few days."
Gifford was silent, and began to pick three long stems of grass and
braid them together. Lois sat absently twisting the fringe on one end of
the soft scarf of yellow crepe, which was knotted across her bosom, and
fell almost to the hem of her white dress.
"I mean," she said, "I'm sorry Helen won't have you in Lockhaven. Of
course Ashurst will miss you. Oh, dear! how horrid it will be not to
have Helen here!"
"Yes," said Gifford sympathetically, "you'll be awfully lonely."
They were silent for a little while. Some white phlox in the girl's bosom
glimmered faintly, and its heavy fragrance stole out upon the warm air.
She pulled off a cluster of the star-like blossoms, and held them
absently against her lips. "You don't seem at all impatient to get away
from Ashurst, Giff," she said. "If I had been you, I should have gone to
Lockhaven a month ago; everything is so sleepy here. Oh, if I were a
man, wouldn't I just go out into the world!"
"Well, Lockhaven can scarcely be called the world," Gifford answered
in his slow way.
"But I should think you would want to go because it will be such a
pleasure to Helen to have you there," she said.
Gifford smiled; he had twisted his braid of grass into a ring, and had

pushed it on the smallest of his big fingers, and was turning it
thoughtfully about. "I don't believe," he said, "that it will make the
slightest difference to Helen whether I am there or not. She has Mr.
Ward."
"Oh," Lois said, "I hardly think even Mr. Ward can take the place of
father, and the rectory, and me. I know it will make Helen happier to
have somebody from home near her."
"No," the young man said, with a quiet persistence, "it won't make the
slightest difference, Lois. She'll have the person she loves best in the
world; and with the person one loves best one could be content in the
desert of Sahara."
"You seem to have a very high opinion of John Ward," Lois said, a
thread of anger in her voice.
"I have," said Gifford; "but that isn't what I mean. It's love, not John
Ward, which means content. But you don't have a very high opinion of
him?"
"Oh, yes, I have," Lois said quickly; "only he isn't good enough for
Helen. I suppose, though, I'd say that of anybody. And he irritates me,
he is so different from other people. I don't think I do--adore him!"
Gifford did not speak; he took another strand of grass, and began to
weave it round and round his little ring, to make it smaller.
"Perhaps I ought not to say that," she added; "of course I wouldn't to
any one but you."
"You ought not to say it to me, Lois," he said.
"Why? Isn't it true?" she said. "I don't think it is wrong to say he's
different; it's certainly true!" Gifford was silent. "Do you?" she
demanded.
"Yes," Gifford answered quietly; "and somehow it doesn't seem fair,

don't you know, to say anything about them, they are so happy; it
seems as though we ought not even to speak of them."
Lois was divided between indignation at being found fault with and
admiration for the sentiment. "Well," she said, rather meekly for her, "I
won't say anything more; no doubt I'll like him when I know him
better."
"See if that fits your finger, Lois," her companion said, sitting up, and
handing her the little grass ring. She took it, smiling, and tried it on.
Gifford watched her with an intentness which made him frown; her
bending head was like a shadowy silhouette against the pale sky, and
the little curls caught the light in soft mist around her forehead.
"But I'm glad for my own part, then," she went on, "to think of you
with Helen. You must tell me everything about her and about her life,
when you write; she won't do it herself."
"I will," he answered, "if you let me write to you."
Lois opened her eyes with surprise; here was this annoying formality
again, which Gifford's fault-finding seemed to have banished. "Let you
write?" she said impatiently. "Why, you know I