Vesty of the Basins | Page 5

eyes were on her mercilessly--she was suffocating
besides with a wild desire to laugh, her breath coming short and quick.
She gave one agonized look at Brother Skates, and then, lifted her eyes
to the window.
The clouds were sad and grand; there was a bird flying to them.
She fixed her eyes there, and her voice flowed out of her:
"'Softly through the storm of life, Clear above the whirlwind's cry, O'er
the waves of sorrow, steals The voice of Jesus, "It is I."'"
The music in her throat had trembled at first like the bird's flight,
winging as it soared, but now all that was over; her uplifted face was
holy, grave:
"'In the Rifted Rock I'm resting.'"
* * * * * *
Elder Cossey forgot his wrath in mysterious deep movings of
compunction. Fluke, who had entered, was soft, reverent, his fingers
twitching for his violin. Even so, I thought, as I listened, it may be will
sound to us some voice from the other shore, when we put out on the
dark river.
"Vesty," said a mite of a girl, coming up to her after meeting, "Evelin
wants to know if you can set up with Clarindy to-night. She 's been
took again."
"Yes," said Vesty, the still look on her face, "I'll come."
"Vesty," said Elder Skates, "when can you haul over the organ and
swipe her out? She 's full o' chalk."
"I'll try and do it to-morrow." Vesty looked at Elder Skates and smiled,

showing her wholesome white teeth.
"Vesty," said Mrs. Nason Teel; "I want ye to set right down here, now
I've got ye, and give me that resute for Mounting Dew pudding."
The blue eyes at the door gave Vesty an imperative, quick glance.
But she sat down by Mrs. Nason Teel; she sat there purposely until all
the people were dispersed and the winding lanes were still outside.
Then she went her own way alone, something like tears veiled under
those long, quiet lashes.
She saw first a muscular hand on the fence and dared not look up, until
Notely Garrison had vaulted over at a bound and stood before her, his
glad eyes flashing, his storm hat in his hand.
Then her look was wild reproach.
"Vesty!" he cried. "Is this the way, after all we have been to one
another? Have you forgotten how we were like sister and brother, you
and I? how Doctor Spearmint led us to school together?" he laughed
eagerly. "How"----
"I haven't forgotten, Note. But it can't be the same again, as man and
woman, with what you are, and what I am."
"Better! O Vesty!"--he stood quite on a level with her now; she was
glad of that. She was a tall girl, taller than he when they parted. "O
Vesty!" he drank in her beauty with an awe that uplifted her in his frank,
bright gaze--"God was happy when He made you!"
But the girl's eyes only searched his with a Basin gravity, for faith.
A fatal step, searching in Notely's eyes! A beautiful pallor crept over
her face, flushing into joy. She ran her hand through his rough, light
hair in the old way.
"It has not changed you, being at the schools so long, as I thought it

would," she said wistfully, stroking his hair with mature gentleness,
though he was older than she. "Why, Note; you look just as brown, and
hearty, and masterful as ever!"
"Oh, but it wasn't book-schools I went to, you know. It was rowing and
foot-ball and taking six bars on the running leap, and swinging from the
feet with the head downward, and all that. I can do it all."
He looked away from her with mischief in his eyes, and hummed a line
through his fine Greek nose, as Captain Pharo might.
"I don't doubt it, but you were high in the college too--for Lunette saw
it in a paper: so high it was spoken of!"
"I just asked them to do that, Vesty. People can't refuse me, you know.
I get whatever I ask for."
He turned to her with a sort of childish pathos on his strong, handsome
face.
She bit her lip for joy and pride in him, even his strange, gay ways.
"Come, Vesta!" he said, with an air of natural and graceful
proprietorship; "a stolen meeting is nonsense between you and me. I
shall see you home."

II
"SETTIN' ON THE LOG"
His face invited me, the skin drawn over it rather tightly, resembling a
death's-head, yet beaming with immortal joy.
He was sitting on a log; his little granddaughter, on the other side of
him, was as cheerfully diverted in falling off of it. He was picking his
teeth with some mysterious talisman of