Chapter XII: Part I

DILLY was taking a last walk with Hart Hammond; they went to Table Rock again, because it was so lovely there they couldn't help it.

"Does it seem as though we had been hiding up on this old mountain for nine weeks?" asked Hart, as they turned away from the pink and purple and golden sky, and moved homeward.

"Oh!" said Dilly, "I was just thinking of that, and it truly doesn't seem possible. And yet when I think of all the lovely things that have happened, it seems as though we had been here most a year."

Hart laughed and gave her an admiring smile; certainly there had been a great change in her. The pale-faced, languid little girl who used to move about with a slow, quiet step was gone; and in her place was a red-checked, bright-eyed maiden with springing step, and cheery voice, and energy in every movement. Hart Hammond knew there had also been a great change in himself; but of this, he said nothing.

"You have evidently got well," he said, watching the sparkle in her eyes.

"O yes! I have; I'm just as well as I can be; won't father be surprised and glad?"

"What are you going to do when you get home? Do you expect to go to school?" He was watching her closely, and could not fail to see a little of the brightness die out of her face; her voice, too, was lower than it had been.

"I don't think I can," she said, speaking slowly. "I have thought about it a good deal; and I don't see how I can. You know father has only me; and there is no school within a mile of where we live; and if there were, I could not afford to go to it; father could not pay the bills this winter, I am sure; and then there's the dressing; and besides, I have to keep house for him. O no! Of course I cannot go to school. I do not mean to think any more about it."

"But you would like very much to go?"

Then a pair of wondering eyes were raised for a minute to his face, and Dilly answered gravely,—

"Why, of course every girl wants to go to school; mother wanted me to get ready to be a teacher; maybe I can, some day, but of course I could not expect to go this winter, and I am not going to let father know I want to do it."