"I'll spare you the particulars; but in less than a month Arthur and
I were engaged. He preached at a little one-night stand of a
Methodist church. There was to be a parsonage the size of a
lunch-wagon, and hens and honeysuckles when we were married. Arthur
used to preach to me a good deal about Heaven, but he never could get
my mind quite off those honeysuckles and hens.
"No; I didn't tell him I'd been on the stage. I hated the business
and all that went with it; I'd cut it out forever, and I didn't see
any use of stirring things up. I was a good girl, and I didn't have
anything to confess, except being an elocutionist, and that was about
all the strain my conscience would stand.
"Oh, I tell you, Lynn, I was happy. I sang in the choir and attended
the sewing society, and recited that 'Annie Laurie' thing with the
whistling stunt in it, 'in a manner bordering upon the professional,'
as the weekly village paper reported it. And Arthur and I went
rowing, and walking in the woods, and clamming, and that poky little
village seemed to me the best place in the world. I'd have been happy
to live there always, too, if--
"But one morning old Mrs. Gurley, the widow lady, got gossipy while I
was helping her string beans on the back porch, and began to gush
information, as folks who rent out their rooms usually do. Mr. Lyle
was her idea of a saint on earth--as he was mine, too. She went over
all his virtues and graces, and wound up by telling me that Arthur
had had an extremely romantic love-affair, not long before, that had
ended unhappily.
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