CHAPTER XX. The time was coming near when Joyce was to come home, and I had done nothing in the matter in which I had promised to fight her battle. It is true that she had begged me not to fight her battle, but I wanted to fight it, and I was with myself that I had so allowed the matter to slide. In the one that I had had with mother, I had been so worsted that I felt, with , my later silence must look like a of defeat.
 
The fact is that I had been thinking of other things. Trayton Harrod and I had had a great many things to think of. He had started a new scheme for the laying on of water.
 
Our village in wells; they, too, were the remnants of the of the town in by-gone days, but they were all at the foot of the hill.
 
Trayton Harrod wanted to bring the water from the spring at the top of Croft's hill, in pipes through the valley, and up our own hill again. He wanted to form a co-operation among the inhabitants for the enterprise. If this was impossible, he wanted father to do it as a private , and to repay himself by charging a rental[155] to those people who would have it brought to their houses. But he met with at every turn. The inhabitants of Marshlands were a stubborn lot; they did not believe in the possibility of the thing; they did not care for innovations; they had done very well all these years with carts that brought the water up the hill and stored it in wells in their gardens, and why not now? He had not gained his point yet, either in one way or in the other, and I had been very busy fighting it for him; that was how it had come to pass that I had forgotten Joyce's business.
 
Mother and I sat in the low window-seat of the straining our eyes over the mending of the family socks and stockings by the light of the June evening. Mother had missed Joyce very much. I had not been all that a daughter should have been to her since I had been in sole charge; I had been , and she had missed Joyce much more, I knew very well, than she chose to confess. Knowing this as I did, I thought the moment would be well chosen to speak of what should affect Joyce's happiness; I thought her heart would be soft to her. But on this point I was mistaken. Mother did not alter her opinion because her heart was soft. She could be very tender, but she was most certainly also very .
 
I opened the conversation by to the letter which father had had from Captain Forrester.
 
"That scheme of his for poor children doesn't seem to be able to get started as easily as he hoped," I said. "I'm sorry. It would have been a beautiful thing, and father will break his heart if it falls through."
 
"He seems to think the young man hasn't gone the right way to work," said mother. "I could have told him he wasn't the right sort for the job."
 
I tried to keep my temper, and it was with a laugh that I said, "Well, if anything could be done I'm sure he would do it, if it was only for the sake of pleasing Joyce."
 
Mother said nothing. She prided herself upon her darning, and she was intent upon a very elaborate piece of lattice-work.
 
"He would do anything to please Joyce. I never saw a man so much in love with a girl," I said.
 
"Have you had great experience of that matter?" asked mother, in her coolest manner. "Because if you have, I should like to hear of it; girls of nineteen don't generally have much experience in such matters."
 
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"I can see that he is in love well enough," said I, biting my lip. Then warming suddenly, I added: "I don't see why, mother, you should set your face so against the young man? You want Joyce to be happy, don't you?"
 
"Yes," said mother, quietly. "I want her to be happy."
 
"Well, it won't make her happy never to see the man she loves," cried I; "no, nor yet to have to wait all that time before she can marry him. I've always heard that long engagements were dreadfully bad things for girls."
 
Mother smiled. "I waited three years for your father," she said, "and I'm a woman of my years."
 
"Perhaps you were different," suggested I.
 
"Maybe," mother. "Women weren't so forward-coming in my time, to be sure."
 
"I don't see that Joyce is forward," cried I.
 
"No, Joyce is seemly behaved if she is let alone. She'll her time, I've no doubt," said mother.
 
I felt the hidden thrust, and it was the more sharply that I replied, "You're so fond of Joyce, I should have thought you wouldn't care to make her suffer."
 
Mother gave a little sigh. She took no notice of my rude .
 
"The Lord knows it's hard to know what's best," said she. "But I'd sooner see her pine a bit now than spend her whole life in , and there's no misery like that of a home where the love hasn't lasted out."
 
The earnestness of this speech made me ashamed of my vexation, and it was gently that I said: "But, mother, I don't see why you should think a man must needs be because he falls in love at first sight. I don't see how people who have known one another all their lives think of falling in love. When do they begin?"
 
"I don't know as I understand this thing that you young folk call 'falling in love,'" said mother. "I was quite sure what I was about when I married your father."
 
"Well, now, mother, I don't see how you can have been quite sure beforehand," argued I, . "You have been lucky, that's all."
 
", it's not all luck," said mother. "It isn't all plain sailing over fifty or sixty years of rubbing up and down; and they'd best have something than a fancy to stand upon who want to make a good job of it."
 
"I don't see what they are to have stouter than love to stand upon," said I. "And I always thought love was a thing that came[157] whether you would or not, and had nothing to do with the merits of people."
 
It was all a great puzzle. Did mother make too little of love, and did I make too much?
 
"That's not love," said mother; "that's a fancy. I misdoubt people who undertake to show patience and steadiness in one thing, before they have learned it in anything else."
 
"What has Frank Forrester done, I should like to know?" asked I, feeling that she was too hard on him.
 
"Nothing, my dear," answered mother, .
 
And I sighed. It was very evident there would be no convincing mother, and that if there was to be any in the hardness of the verdict for Joyce, it must come through father, and not through her.
 
She rose and moved away, for the light had , and we could not see to work.
 
"If I loved a man I'd take my chance," was my parting shot.
 
"Then, my dear, it's to be hoped you won't love a man just yet," said mother, as she went out of the room.
 
And that was all that I got by my endeavor to further my sister's cause with mother. I think, however, I soon forgot the that my failure caused me; it was driven out of my head by other and more interests.
 
Mother and I had been up at "The Elms" that very day getting things in order for Mr. Harrod. We had found a tidy widow woman to wait on him, and mother had put up fresh white dimity curtains from her own store to brighten up his little parlor. When he came in to supper he was full of quiet delight. I forget what he said; he was not a man of many words; he was always wrapped up in his business; but I that, however few they were, they were words of affectionate to mother for a kind of care which he seemed never to have known before, and I know that I was grateful to him for them—so sensitively responsible is one for the actions of another who is slowly creeping near to one's heart.
 
Harrod sat some time with mother on the lawn discussing the qualities of cows; she wanted father to give her a new one, and she wanted Harrod to find her one as good as Daisy, if such a thing were possible. He listened with great patience to her reminiscences of past favorites, and promised to do his best; but I could see that there was something on his mind.
 
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I fell to wondering what it was. I fell to wondering whether Trayton Harrod ever thought of anything else but the work he had to do, the dumb creatures that came his way in the doing of it, and the fair or lowering face of the world in which he did it. I soon learned what it was. It was something that had been discussed many times, but it had never been discussed as it was discussed that evening.
 
Father came out with his pipe a-light; his old face wore its most dreamy and expression. He had evidently been thinking of something that had given him pleasure; but I do not think it had to do with the farm. But Mr. Harrod went to meet him, and they strolled down the garden together, and stood for about ten minutes talking hard by the bed where the golden gillyflowers and the purple bloomed side by side.
 
"Well, you know what I have told you, Mr. Maliphant," said Harrod. "You never can make the f............