"Certainly not."
"You don't find it dull, provincial, unsympathetic?"He laughed cheerily."Well, there's this," he explained: "I have an advantage over your friend.
I see a more interesting side of things probably.
The people I live among are pretty thorough cosmopolites in a way, and the life I lead--""I think I begin to understand a little about the life you lead," she interrupted."Then you don't complain of Canaan?""Of course not."She threw him a quick, bright, happy look, then glanced again at the chair in which Mrs.Fear had sat."Joe," she said, "last night I heard the people singing in the houses, the old Sunday-evening way.It `took me back so'!""Yes, it would.And something else: there's one hymn they sing more than any other; it's Canaan's favorite.Do you know what it is?""Is it `Rescue the Perishing'?""That's it.`Rescue the Perishing'!" he cried, and repeating the words again, gave forth a peal of laughter so hearty that it brought tears to his eyes."`RESCUE THE PERISHING'!"At first she did not understand his laughter, but, after a moment, she did, and joined her own to it, though with a certain tremulousness.
"It IS funny, isn't it?" said Joe, wiping the moisture from his eyes.Then all trace of mirth left him."Is it really YOU, sitting here and laughing with me, Ariel?""It seems to be," she answered, in a low voice.
"I'm not at all sure."
"You didn't think, yesterday afternoon," he began, almost in a whisper,--" you didn't think that I had failed to come because I--" He grew very red, and shifted the sentence awkwardly: "I was afraid you might think that I was--that I didn't come because I might have been the same way again that I was when--when I met you at the station?""Oh no!" she answered, gently."No.I knew better.""And do you know," he faltered, "that that is all over? That it can never happen again?""Yes, I know it," she returned, quickly.
"Then you know a little of what I owe you.""No, no," she protested.