There was a flush in Ann’s strong neck and face to the very roots of her hair. She leaned against the windlass and folded her bare arms. "Between me and you, as intimate friends, Mary Waycroft, I’d rather actually load that girl down with things to have and wear than to have anything on the face of this earth. I’d get on the train myself and go clean to Atlanta and lay myself out. What she had to wear would be the talk of the country for miles around. I’d do it to give the lie to the court that said she’d be in better hands than in mine when she went away with Joe Boyd. Oh, I’d do it fast enough, but there’s no way. She wouldn’t propose it, nor I wouldn’t for my life. I wouldn’t run the risk of being refused; that would actually humble me to the dust. No, I couldn’t risk that." "I believe, Ann, that I could do it for you in such a way that——" "No, nobody could do it; it isn’t to be done!" "I started to say, Ann, that I believed I could kind o’ hint around and find out how the land lies without using your name at all." Ann Boyd held her breath; her face became fixed in suspense. She leaned forward, her great eyes staring eagerly at her neighbor. "Do you think you could do that?" she asked, finally, after a lengthy pause. "Do you think you could do it without letting either of them know I was—was willing?" "Yes, I believe I could, and you may let it rest right here. You needn’t either consent or refuse, Ann, but I’ll be back here about twelve o’clock Thursday, and I’ll tell you what takes place." "I’ll leave the whole thing in your hands," said Ann, and she moved towards the rear door of her house. "Now"—and her tone was more joyful than it had been for years—"come in and sit down." "No, I can’t; I must hurry on back home," said the visitor. "I must get ready to go; Pete wants to make an early start." "You know you’ll have plenty of time all this evening to stuff things in that carpet-bag of yours." Ann laughed, and her friend remarked that it was the first smile and joke she had heard from Ann Boyd since their girlhood together. "Well, I will go in, then," said Mrs. Waycroft. "I love to see you the way you are now, Ann. It does my heart good." But the mood was gone. Ann was serious again. They sat in the sitting-room chatting till the people who had been to meeting began to return homeward along the dusty road. Among them, in Sam Hemingway’s spring wagon, with its wabbling wheels and ragged oil-cloth top, were Jane and her daughter Virginia, neither of whom looked towards the cottage as they passed.