Thus the tedious afternoon wore away, and just as the sun was settling down so that the shadow of the elm in the front-yard stretched across the road into the cow pasture, the dead silence was broken.  Julia had been wishing that somebody would speak.  Her mother’s sulky speechlessness was worse than her scolding, and Julia had even wished her to resume her storming.  But the silence was broken by Cynthy Ann, who came into the hall and called, “Jule, I wish you would go to the barn and gether the eggs; I want to make some cake.”

Every evening of her life Julia gathered the eggs, and there was nothing uncommon in Cynthy Ann’s making cake, so that nothing could be more innocent than this request.  Julia sat opposite the front-door, her mother sat farther along.  Julia could see the face of Cynthy Ann.  Her mother could only hear the voice, which was dry and commonplace enough.  Julia thought she detected something peculiar in Cynthy’s manner.  She would as soon have thought of the big oak gate-posts with their round ball-like heads telegraphing her in a sly way, as to have suspected any such craft on the part of Cynthy Ann, who was a good, pious, simple-hearted, Methodist old maid, strict with herself, and censorious toward others.  But there stood Cynthy making some sort of gesture, which Julia took to mean that she was to go quick.  She did not dare to show any eagerness.  She laid down her work, and moved away listlessly.  And evidently she had been too slow.  For if August had been in sight when Cynthy Ann called her, he had now disappeared on the other side of the hill.  She loitered along, hoping that he would come in sight, but he did not, and then she almost smiled to think how foolish she had been in imagining that Cynthy Ann had any interest in her love affair.  Doubtless Cynthy sided with her mother.

And so she climbed from mow to mow gathering the eggs.  No place is sweeter than a mow, no occupation can be more delightful than gathering the fresh eggs—­great glorious pearls, more beautiful than any that men dive for, despised only because they are so common and so useful!  But Julia, gliding about noiselessly, did not think much of the eggs, did not give much attention to the hens scratching for wheat kernels amongst the straw, nor to the barn swallows chattering over the adobe dwellings which they were building among the rafters above her.  She had often listened to the love-talk of these last, but now her heart was too heavy to hear.  She slid down to the edge of one of the mows, and sat there a few feet above the threshing-floor with her bonnet in her hand, looking off sadly and vacantly.  It was pleasant to sit here alone and think, without the feeling that her mother was penetrating her thoughts.

A little rustle brought her to consciousness.  Her face was fiery red in a minute.  There, in one corner of the threshing-floor, stood August, gazing at her.  He had come into the barn to find a single-tree in place of one which had broken.  While he was looking for it, Julia had come, and he had stood and looked, unable to decide whether to speak or not, uncertain how deeply she might be offended, since she had never once let her eyes rest on him at dinner.  And when she had come to the edge of the mow and stopped there in a reverie, August had been utterly spell-bound.