“Yes, of course I do.  I know Barney just as well as you do, Charlotte.  Oh, Charlotte, don’t feel bad.  I wouldn’t have told mother if I’d thought.  I didn’t mean to do any harm.  I was all upset myself by it.  Don’t cry, Charlotte.”

“I ain’t going to cry,” said Charlotte, with spirit.  “I’ve stopped cryin’.”  She wiped her eyes forcibly with her apron, and gave her head a proud toss.  “I know you didn’t mean to do any harm, Rose, and I suppose it would have got out anyway.  ’Most everything does get out but good deeds.”

“I truly didn’t mean to do any harm, Charlotte,” Rose repeated.

“I know you didn’t.  We won’t say any more about it.”

“I was just running over across lots last night,” Rose said.  “I supposed you’d be in the front room with Barney, but I thought I’d see Aunt Sarah.  I’d got terrible lonesome; mother had gone to sleep in her chair, and father had gone to bed.  When I got out by the stone-wall next the wood I heard you; then I ran right back.  Don’t you—­suppose he’ll ever come again, Charlotte?”

“No,” said Charlotte.

“Oh, Charlotte!” There was a curious quality in the girl’s voice, as if some great hidden emotion in her heart tried to leap to the surface and make a sound, although it was totally at variance with the import of her cry.  Charlotte started, without knowing why.  It was as if Rose’s words and her tone had different meanings, and conflicted like the wrong lines with a tune.

“I gave it up last night,” said Charlotte.  “It’s all over.  I’m goin’ to pack my wedding things away.”

“I don’t see what makes you so sure.”

“I know him.”

“But I don’t see what you’ve done, Charlotte; he didn’t quarrel with you.”

“That don’t make any odds.  He can’t get married to me now without he breaks his will, and he can’t.  He can’t get outside himself enough to break it.  I’ve studied it all out.  It’s like ciphering.  It’s all over.”

“Charlotte.”

“What is it?”

“Why—­couldn’t you go somewhere else to get married?  What’s the need of his comin’ here, if he’s been ordered out, and he’s said he wouldn’t?”

“That’s just the letter of it,” returned Charlotte, scornfully.  “Do you suppose he could cheat himself that way, or I’d have him if he could?  When Barney Thayer went out of this house last night, and said what he did, he meant that it was all over, that he was never going to marry me, nor have anything more to do with us, and he’s going to stand by it.  I am not finding any fault with him.  I’ve made up my mind that it’s all over, and I’m going to pack away my weddin’ things.”

“Oh, Charlotte, you take it so calm!”

“What do you want me to do?”

“If it was anybody else, I should think they didn’t care.”

“Maybe I don’t.”