They stood on the orchard hill one Sunday afternoon at the pause of the
year. Buds were swelling and the edges of the woods wore a soft blush
against the vaporous sky. The bare brown slopes were streaked with snow. A
floe of winter ice, grinding upon itself with the tide, glared yellow as
an old man's teeth in the setting sun. From across the river came the
thunder of a train, bound north, two engines dragging forty cars of
freight piled up by some recent traffic-jam; it plunged into a tunnel, and
they waited, listening to the monster's smothered roar. Out it burst, its
breath packed into clouds, the engines whooped, and round the curve where
a point of cedars cut the sky the huge creature unwound itself, the hills
echoing to its tread.

Emmy watched it out of sight, and breathed again. "Hundreds, hundreds
going every day! It seems easy enough for everybody else. Oh, if I were a
man!"

"What do you want I should do, Emmy?" Adam knew well what man she was
thinking of.

"_I_ want? Don't you ever want things yourself?"

"When I want a thing bad, I gen'ly think it's worth waiting for."

"People don't get things by waiting. I don't know how you can stand
it,--to stay here year after year. And now you've tied yourself up with a
promise, and you know you cannot keep it!"

"I'm trying to keep it."

"You couldn't keep it if you cared--really and truly--as some do!" She