"Mamma and papa think his music sounded of home and old times. How did it
sound to you, Laura?"
Laura put her hands over her closed eyes in the dark, and said,
dreamily,--"It sounded to me like love-songs, sung by such a tender voice,
out in the woods, somewhere, where there were pine-trees and a brook."
"It seemed to me like butterflies," said Clara. She did not explain what
she meant.
The next morning, as it had been arranged in sisterly council, Laura was
to entertain the stranger while Clara made the preparations for breakfast.
Laura found him in the porch, already rejoicing in the morning view. But,
after the first greeting, she found talking with him difficult. They fell
into a silence; and to escape from it Laura finally ran into the kitchen,
blue muslin and all. She pushed Clara away from the fireplace.
"You must let me help," she said, and moved pots, pans, and kettles.
"Another stick of wood would make this water boil," she went on.
"Where shall I find it?" said a voice behind her; and Arnold directly
answered his own question with his ready help.
There followed great bustling, laughter, help, and interruption to work.
When Mrs. Ashton came down, she found the breakfast-table in its wonted
place in the broad kitchen, instead of being laid in the back-parlor, as
was the custom when there were guests in the house. It was a very happy
breakfast; the door opened wide upon the green behind the house, and the
September morning air brought in an appetite for the generously laden
table.
After breakfast, Arnold asked the way to the knoll behind the house,
covered with pines. Laura went to show him, though it was but a little
walk. In the woods, by the pine-trees, near the sound of the brook, Arnold
asked Laura, "What had his music said to her?" Whether she answered him in
the words she had given her sister the night before I will not say; but
late to dinner, out from the woods, two happy lovers walked home in the
bright September noon.
* * * * *
The log-cabin was built. If in its walls there were any broad chinks
through which a wind might make its way, there were other draughts to send
it back again,--strains of music, that helped to kindle the household
hearth,--such strains as made sacred the seed that was laid in the earth,
that refined coarse labor, that softened the tone of the new colony rising
up around, so that life, even the rudest, was made noble, and the work was
not merely for the body, but for the spirit, and a new land was planted
under these strains of the musician.
* * * * *