Mr. Ware took it, mechanically.

“Have you finished it?” he asked kindly.

“All I want,” replied Jethro, “all I want.”

He turned, and went down the slope.  Twice the words rose to the minister’s lips to call him back, and were suppressed.  Yet what to say to him if he came?  Mr. Ware sat down again, sadly wondering why Jethro Bass should be so difficult to talk to.

The parsonage was of only one story, with a steep, sloping roof.  On the left of the doorway was Cynthia’s room, and the minister imagined he heard a faint, rustling noise at her window.  Presently he arose, barred the door; could be heard moving around in his room for a while, and after that all was silence save for the mournful crying of a whippoorwill in the woods.  Then a door opened softly, a white vision stole into the little entry lighted by the fan-window, above, seized the book and stole back.  Had the minister been a prying man about his household, he would have noticed next day that Cynthia’s candle was burned down to the socket.  He saw nothing of the kind:  he saw, in fact, that his daughter flitted about the house singing, and he went out into the sun to drop potatoes.

No sooner had he reached the barn than this singing ceased.  But how was
Mr. Ware to know that?

Twice Cynthia, during the week that followed, got halfway down the slope of the parsonage hill, the book under her arm, on her way to the tannery; twice went back, tears of humiliation and self-pity in her eyes at the thought that she should make advances to a man, and that man the tanner’s son.  Her household work done, a longing for further motion seized her, and she walked out under the maples of the village street.  Let it be understood that Coniston was a village, by courtesy, and its shaded road a street.  Suddenly, there was the tannery, Jethro standing in front of it, contemplative.  Did he see her?  Would he come to her?  Cynthia, seized by a panic of shame, flew into Aunt Lucy Prescott’s, sat through half an hour of torture while Aunt Lucy talked of redemption of sinners, during ten minutes of which Jethro stood, still contemplative.  What tumult was in his breast, or whether there was any tumult, Cynthia knew not.  He went into the tannery again, and though she saw him twice later in the week, he gave no sign of seeing her.

On Saturday Cynthia bought a new bonnet in Brampton; Sunday morning put it on, suddenly remembered that one went to church to honor God, and wore her old one; walked to meeting in a flutter of expectancy not to be denied, and would have looked around had that not been a cardinal sin in Coniston.  No Jethro!  General opinion (had she waited to hear it among the horse sheds or on the green), that Jethro’s soul had slid back into the murky regions, from which it were folly for even Cynthia to try to drag it.

CHAPTER III