"Because I told him I could not marry him without first telling him that
I loved you, Tom; that I had been loving you always and in spite of
everything," she said.
And what more she said I do not know.
XXXVII
WHOSE YESTERDAYS LOOK BACKWARD
"Tom, isn't this the same foot-log you made me walk that day when you
were trying to convince me that you were the meanest boy that ever
breathed?" asked Ardea, gathering her skirts preparatory to the stream
crossing.
"It is. But you didn't walk it, as you may remember: you fell off. Wait
a second and give me those azaleas. I'll go first and take your hand."
Tom Gordon, lately home from a full half-year spent in the unfettered
solitudes of the Carriso iron fields, to be married first, and afterward
to start up--with Caleb for superintendent--the idle Chiawassee plant as
a test and experimental shop for American Aqueduct, was indemnifying
himself for the long exile.
On this Saturday evening in the lovers' month of June he had walked
Ardea around and about through the fragrant summer wood of the upper
creek valley, retracing, in part, the footsteps of the boy whose fishing
had been spoiled and the little girl who was to be bullied into
submission; and so rambling they had come at length to the old
moss-grown foot-log which had been a newly-felled tree in the former
time.
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