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Em
by
“Then the women folks in our family will have to begin. I can get a dollar a day. The Burnham girls went, and they’re as good as we are. I’m going, anyway,”–the girl’s red lips shut themselves in a narrow line.
“Oh, they’re all good enough, Emmy,” protested Mrs. Wickersham; “it’s nothing against them, only it’s going out to work. You know the way men folks feel–I don’t know what your brother will say.”
“You can tell him I’ve set my heart on it. They have great fun over there. He wanted me to go camping to the beach with the same crowd of young folks this summer. I’ll not stay at night, mother; I’ll walk home every evening. It’s no use saying anything, I’m going.”
“Is Steve Elliott at the camp?” asked Benny, when his mother told him.
“She didn’t say anything about him, Benny, but I suppose he is. Why?”
“I guess that explains it,” said the invalid, smiling wistfully.
II.
Nearly every available grape-picker in the little valley was at Bassett’s vineyard. There was a faint murmur of surprise when Em walked into the camp on Monday morning.
“I thought you weren’t coming, Em,” said Irene Burnham, curving her smooth, sunburned neck away from the tall young fellow who stood beside her.
“I changed my mind,” said Em quietly.
“It’s awful hot work,” giggled Irene, “and I always burn so; I wish I tanned. But I’m going to hold out the rest of this week, if I burn to a cinder.”
“‘Rene’s after a new parasol,” announced her brother teasingly; “she’s bound to save her complexion if it takes the skin off.”
The young people gave a little shout of delight, and straggled down the aisles of the vineyard. The thick growth had fallen away from the gnarled trunks of the vines, and the grapes hung in yellowing clusters to the warm, sun-dried earth. The trays were scattered in uneven rows on the plowed ground between the vines, their burden turning to sweetened amber in the sunshine. The air was heavy with the rich, fruity ferment of the grapes. Bees were beginning to drone among the trays. The mountains which hemmed in the little valley were a deep, velvety blue in the morning light. Em looked at them with a new throb in her heart. She did not care what was beyond them as she walked between the tangled vine-rows. Stephen Elliott had left Irene, and walked beside her. The valley was wide enough for Em’s world,–a girl’s world, which is hemmed in by mountains always, and always narrow.
As the day advanced the gay calls of the grape-harvesters grew more and more infrequent. The sky seemed to fade in the glare of the sun to a pale, whitish blue. Buzzards reeled through the air, as if drunken with sunlight. The ashen soil of the vineyard burned Em’s feet and dazzled her eyes. She stood up now and then and looked far down the valley where the yellow barley-stubble shimmered off into haze. As she looked, something straightened her lips into a resolute line and sent her back to her work with softened eyes.
“Do you get very tired, Em?” her brother asked, as she sat in the doorway at nightfall.
The girl leaned her head against the casement as if to steady her weary voice.
“Not very,” she said slowly and gravely; “it’s a little warm at noon, but I don’t mind it.”
“I thought sure I’d be up by this time,” fretted the invalid, the yearning in his heart that pain could not quench turning his sympathy to envy.
“The doctor says you’re getting on real well, Ben,” said Em steadily.
The young fellow looked down at his wasted hands, gray and ghostly in the twilight.
“Was ‘Rene there?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“It isn’t like having your sister go out to work, Benny,” said Mrs. Wickersham soothingly; “just the neighbors, and real nice folks, too. I wouldn’t fret about it.”
On Wednesday morning, as Em neared the camp, she saw the grape-pickers gathered in a little group before the girls’ tent. Steve Elliott separated himself from the crowd, and came to meet her.