"You'll have breakfast with me, I suppose," she said. "I got up early because I couldn't sleep, but it's not yet four o'clock." For an instant he looked at her gravely. "Worrying about the day?" "A little." "If I could only manage to hobble along with you." "Oh, but you couldn't, dear--and the worst of it is having to wait so long in town for the afternoon stage. I get my sewing, and then I eat my lunch on the old church steps, and then there are four mortal hours when I walk about aimlessly in the sun." "And you wouldn't go to see anybody?" "With my bundle of work, and in this alpaca? Not for worlds!" He sighed, not reproachfully, but with the sympathy which projects itself into states of feeling other than its own. "Well, I wish all the same you'd let Lila go in with you. I think you make a mistake about her, Cynthia; she wouldn't feel the strain of it half so much as you do." "But I'd feel it for her. No, no, it's better as it is; and she does walk to the cross-roads with me, you know. Old Jacob Weatherby brings her back in his wagon. Christopher can't get off, but he'll come for me at sundown." "Are you sure it isn't young Jim who fetches Lila?" She frowned. "If it were young Jim, her going would be impossible--but the old man knows his place and keeps it." "It's a better place than ours to-day, I reckon," returned Tucker, smiling. "To an observer across the road I dare say the odds would seem considerably in his favour. I met him in the turnpike last Sunday in a brand new broadcloth." "Oh, I can't bear to hear you," returned Cynthia passionately. "If we must go to the dogs, for heaven's sake, let's go remembering that we are Blakes--or Corbins, if you like." "Bless your heart, child, I'd just as lief remember I was a Blake or even a Weatherby, for that matter. Why, Jacob Weatherby's grandfather was an honest, self-respecting tiller of the soil when mine used to fish his necktie out of the punch bowl every Saturday night, people said." She lifted her black skirt above her knees, and pinned it tightly at her back with a large safety pin she had taken from her bosom. Then kneeling on the hearth, she laid the knots of resinous pine on a crumpled newspaper in the great stone fireplace. "I don't mind your picking flaws in me," she said dryly, "but I do wish you would let my great grandfather rest in his grave. He's about all I've got." "Well, I beg his pardon for speaking the truth about him," returned Tucker penitently; "and now my swallows are so noisy I must stop their mouths." He went out humming a tune, while Cynthia hung the boiler from the crane and mixed the corn-meal dough in a wooden tray. When breakfast was on the table Lila appeared with a reproachful face, hurriedly knotting her kerchief as she entered. "Oh, Cynthia, you promised to let me get breakfast," she said. "Mother was very restless all night--she dreamed that she was being married over again--so I slept too late."