CHAPTER V.

"FOR I LOVE YOU, BETH."

It came soon, her last Sabbath at home, and the sun was sinking in the west.  Beth sat by her favorite window in the parlor.  Do you remember that last Sabbath before you left home?  Everything, the hills outside, the pictures on the walls, even the very furniture, looked at you in mute farewell.  Beth leaned back in her rocker and looked through the open door into the kitchen with its maple floor, and the flames leaping up in the old cook-stove where the fire had been made for tea.  She had always liked that stove with its cheery fire.  Then she turned her eyes to the window and noted that the early September frost had browned her favorite meadow where the clover bloomed last June, and that the maples along the road where she went for the milk every evening, were now all decked in crimson and yellow.

Her father was sitting at the table reading, but when she looked around she saw his eyes were fixed upon her with a tender look.  Poor father!  He would miss her, she knew, though he tried not to let her see how much.  Aunt Prudence, too, dear old soul, seemed sorry to have her go, but she had her own peculiar way of expressing it, namely, by getting crosser every day.  She did not approve of so much “larnin’” for girls, especially when Beth was “goin’ to be married to that puny Mayfair.”  Aunt Prudence always said her “say,” as she expressed it, but she meant well and Beth understood.

Beth was not to go until Friday, and Clarence was to meet her at the station.  He had been called away to the city with his father on business more than a week before.  Arthur was with them to-day, but he was to leave on the early morning train to join a college mate.  He was to be at Victoria University that winter and Beth expected to see him often.

They had an early supper, and the September sunset streamed through the open window on the old-fashioned china tea-set.  Beth was disappointed after tea when her father’s services were required immediately by a patient several miles away.  Arthur and she sat down by that same old parlor window in the hush of the coming night; a few white clouds were spread like angel wings above and the early stars were shining in the west.  They were silent for a while.  Arthur and Beth were often silent when together, but the silence was a pleasing, not an embarrassing one.

“Are you sorry to leave home, Beth?” asked Arthur.

“Yes, I am; and would you believe it, I thought I’d be so glad to have a change, and yet it makes me sad now the time is drawing near.”

They were silent again for a while.

“Arthur, do you know, I think it seems so hard for you to go away so far and be a missionary when you are so fond of home and home life.”

He smiled tenderly upon her, but she did not know the meaning of that smile then as she knew a little later.