“HETTY! do you ever think what it would be like to be engaged?”
“Engaged to do what?” said Hetty lazily.
She lay as in a cradle, in a grassy hollow under an apple tree—the
Anak of his tribe. The branches, freighted with pink and white blooms,
dipped earthward until the extreme twigs almost brushed the grass, and
shut in the two girls arbor-wise. The May sun warmed the flowers into
fragrance that hinted subtly of continual fruitiness. Hester said she
tasted, rather than smelled it. Bees hummed in the boughs; through the
still blandness of the air a light shower of petals fell silently over
Hetty’s blue gown, settled upon her hair, and drifted in the folds of
the afghan covering Hester’s lower limbs.
Homer had discovered in the garden fence a gate opening into this
orchard, and confidentially revealed the circumstance to Hetty who,
in time, imparted it to Hester, and conspired with her to explore the
paradise as soon as the boys and Fanny were safely off to Sunday School.
“Engaged to do what?” Hetty had said in such good faith that she opened
dreamy eyes wide at the accent of the reply.
“To be married, of course, Miss Ingenuous! What else could I mean?”
“Oh-h-h!” still more indolently. “I don’t know that I ever thought far
in that direction. Why should I?”
“Why shouldn’t you, or any other healthy and passably good-looking
girl, expect to be engaged—and be married—and be happy? It is time you
began to take the matter into consideration, if you never did before.”
“There is usually another party to such an arrangement.”
“And why not in your case?”
“Where should he come from? Is he to drop from the moon? Or out of the
apple tree”—stirred to the simile by the flick of a tinted petal upon
her nose. “Or am I to stamp him out of the earth, _à la_ Pompey? And
what could I do with him if he were to pop up like a fairy prince, at
this or any other instant?”
“Fall in love with him, and marry him out-of-hand! I _wish_ you would,
Hetty, and take me to live with you! That is one of my dearest dreams.
I have thought it all out when the backache keeps me awake at night,
and when I get quiet dreamy hours by day, when _he_ is off pastoraling,
and the boys and Fan are at school, and baby Annie is asleep, and I
can hear Tony crooning ‘Sweet Julia’ so far away I can’t distinguish
the frightful words, and you are going about the house singing to
yourself, and blessing every room you enter like a shifting sunbeam.”
“Why, my pet, you are talking poetry!”
Hetty raised her head from the arms crossed beneath it, and stared
at the child. The light, filtered through the mass of scented color,
freshened her complexion and rounded the outlines of her face; her
solemn eyes looked upward; her hands lay together, like two lily
petals, upon the coverlet. Unwittingly she was a living illustration of
her father’s theory of the Reality of the Unseen.
“No!” she answered quietly. “Not poetry, for it may easily come to pass
that you should have a husband and home of your own. I do dream poems
sometimes, if poetry is clouds and sunsets and music nobody else hears,
and voices—and love words—and bosh!”
Hetty could not help laughing.
“Tell me some of the glory and the bosh! This is a beautiful
confessional, Hester; I wish we had nothing to do for a week but to lie
on the grass, and look at the blue sky through apple blossoms.”
“Amen!” breathed her companion softly, and for a while they were so
quiet that the robins, nesting upon the other side of the tree, began
to whisper together.
“Bosh and my poetry dreams are synonyms,” resumed Hester, her voice
curiously mellowed from its accustomed sharpness. “Other people may
say as much of theirs. I _know_ it of mine. There’s the difference.
All the same they are as sweet as the poisoned honey we were reading
about the other day, which the bees make from poppy fields. And while I
suck it, I forget. My romance has no more foundation than the story of
the Prince and the Little White Cat. Mine is a broken-backed cat, but
she comes straight in my dreams after her head is cut off. You don’t
suppose she minded _that_! She must have been so impatient when the
Prince hesitated that she was tempted to grab his sword and saw through
her own neck. You see she recollected what she had been. The woman’s
soul was cooped up in the cat’s skin. And I was eight years old when
the evil spell was laid upon _me_!”
The tears in Hetty’s throat hindered response. Never until this
instant, with all her love for her dependent charge, her knowledge
of her sufferings, and the infinite pity these engendered, had the
deprivations Hester’s affliction involved seemed so horribly, so
atrociously cruel. The listener’s nails dug furrows in her palms,
she set her teeth, and looking up to the unfeeling smile of the deaf
and dumb heavens, she said something in her heart that would have
left faint hope of her eternal weal in the orthodox mind of her
brother-in-law.
Hester was speaking again.
“Every painter has his models. I have had mine. I dress each one up and
work the wires to make him or her go through the motions—my motions,
mind you! not theirs, poor puppets! When the dress gets shabby, or the
limbs rickety, I throw them upon the rubbish heap, and look out for
another.
“I got a new one last Thursday. The man who jumped over me in the
station, and afterward carried me into the restaurant (such _strong_,
steady arms as he had!) is a real hero! Oh, I am building a noble
castle to put him in! He lives near here, for he passes the house three
times a day. His eyes have a smile in them, and his mustache droops
just like Charles I.’s, and he walks with a spring as if he were so
full of life he longed to leap or fly, and his voice has a ring and
resonance like an organ. The pretty girl that called him ‘Mark’ to-day,
is his sister.”
“Why not his wife?”
“Wife! Don’t you suppose I know the cut of a married man, even on the
street? He hasn’t the first symptom of the craft. He doesn’t swagger,
and he doesn’t slink. A husband does one or the other.”
Hetty laughed out merrily. There was a sense of relief in Hester’s
return to the sarcastic raillery habitual to her, which made her mirth
the heartier.
A man crossing the lower slope of the orchard heard the bubbling peal,
and looked in the direction of the big tree. So did his attendant, a
huge St. Bernard dog. He tore up the acclivity, bellowing ferociously.
Before his master’s shout arose above his baying he was almost upon the
girls. At the instant of alarm, Hetty had thrown herself before the
wheeled chair and the helpless occupant, and faced the foe. Crouching
slightly, as for a spring, her face blenched, eyes wide and steady, she
stood in the rosy shadow of the branches, both hands outthrown to ward
off the bounding assailant.
“What a pose!” was March’s first thought, professional instinct
asserting itself, concerned though he was at the panic for which he was
responsible. In the same lightning flash came—“I’ll paint that girl
some day!”
“Don’t be frightened!” he was calling, as he ran. “He will not hurt
you!”
Hester had shrieked feebly, and lay almost swooning among her cushions.
Hetty had not uttered a sound, but, as the master laid his hand on the
dog’s collar her knees gave way under her, and she sank down by the
cripple’s chair, her head resting upon the edge of the wicker side. She
was fighting desperately for composure, or the semblance of it, and did
not look up when March began to apologize.
“I am awfully sorry,” he panted, ruefully penitent. “And so will
Thor—my dog, you know—be when he understands how badly he has behaved.
He is seldom so inhospitable.”
The words brought up Hetty’s head and wits.
“Are we trespassing?” she queried anxiously. “We thought that this
orchard was a part of the parsonage grounds, or we would not have come.
It is we who should beg your pardon.”
“By no means!” He had taken off his hat, and in his regretful sincerity
looked handsomer than when his eyes had smiled, concluded Hester, whose
senses were rapidly returning. “My name is Gilchrist, and my father’s
grounds adjoin those of the parsonage. He had the gate cut between your
garden and the orchard, that the clergyman’s family might be as much at
home here as ourselves. I hope you will forgive my dog’s misdemeanor,
and my heedlessness in not seeing you before he had a chance to
frighten you.”
Summoning something of his father’s gracious stateliness, he continued,
more formally:
“Have I the pleasure of addressing Miss Wayt?”
Bow and question were for Hetty. Hester’s voice, thin and dissonant,
replied with old-fashioned decorum of manner, but in unconventional
phrase:
“_I_ have the misfortune to be Miss Wayt. This is Mr. Wayt’s wife’s
sister, Miss Alling.”
It was a queer speech, made queerer by the prim articulation the
author deemed proper in the situation. March tried not to see that
the subject of the second clause of the introduction flushed deeply,
while her mute return of his bow had a serious natural grace he thought
charming. When he begged that she would resume her seat, the little
roguish curl at the corner of her lips, which he recollected as archly
demure, came into play.
“We have no chairs to offer, but if you do not object to the best we
have to give”—finishing the half invitation by seating herself upon a
grass-grown root, jutting out near the trunk of the tree.
“The nicest carpet and lounge in the world,” affirmed March, sitting
down upon the sward. “Odd, isn’t it, that American men don’t know
how to loll on the turf as English do? Our climate is ever so much
drier and we have three times as many fair days in the year, and some
of us seem to be as loosely put together. But we don’t understand
how to fling ourselves down all in a heap that doesn’t look awkward
either, and be altogether at ease in genuine Anglican fashion. Even if
there are ladies present, an Englishman lies on the grass, and it is
considered ‘quite the thing, don’t you know?’ They say the imported
American never gets the hang of it, try as he will. A man must be born
on the other side or he can’t learn it.”
“There may be something in your countryman’s born reverence for women
that prevents him from mastering the accomplishment,” said Hetty, a
little dryly.
March bowed gayly.
“Thank you for the implied compliment in the name of American men! I am
glad you are getting the benefit of this perfect May day. There, at any
rate, we have the advantage of the Mother Country, if she _has_ given
us the Maypole and ‘The Queen of the May.’ This is a sour and dubious
month in Merry England.”
“You have been there, then?”
Hester said it abruptly, as she said most things, but the eagerness
dashed with longing that gave plaintive cadence to the question, caught
March’s ear.
“Several times. I sailed from Liverpool twelve days ago. I was just off
the steamer, and may be a little unsteady on my feet, when I collided
with your carriage last Thursday, and you generously forgave me.”
The girl was regarding him with frank admiration that would have
annoyed an ultra-sensitive man, and amused, while it flattered, a vain
one.
“It must be _heavenly_ to travel in the country of Scott and Dickens!”
she said, quaintly naïve. “How you must have enjoyed it!”
“I did, exceedingly, but less on account of ‘David Copperfield’ and
‘Nicholas Nickleby’ than because, as a boy, I reveled in English
history, and that my mother’s father, for whom I was named, was
English. You should hear my sister talk of her first journey across
England. She would say every little while in an awed undertone: ‘This
is just _living_ Dickens!’ You have not met her yet, I think?” to Hetty.
“No.”
The tone was reserved, without being rude. He could have fancied
that sadness underlay civil regret. Perhaps May had been mistaken in
postponing her call until the parsonage was in perfect order.
“She means to call very soon. She thought it would be unneighborly
to intrude before you had recovered from the fatigue of removal and
travel. Mr. Wayt was my father’s guest for a day or two, you know,
before your arrival, and I have since had the pleasure of meeting him
several times and of hearing him preach this morning.”
In the pause that succeeded the speech the church bell began to ring
for afternoon service. Under the impression that he had lost caste in
not attending upon the second stated ordinance of the sanctuary he
offered a lame explanation.
“I am afraid I am not an exemplary church-goer. But I find one
sermon as much as I can digest and practice from Sunday to Sunday.
My mother doesn’t like to hear me say it. She thinks such sentiments
revolutionary and uncanonical, and no doubt she is right.”
“Anybody is excusable for preferring to worship ‘under green apple
boughs’ to-day,” observed Hester, with uncharacteristic tact. “You see
we have always lived in cities, great and small. We have been used to
brick walls and narrow, high houses, with paved backyards, with cats on
the fences”—disgustfully—“and wet clothes flapping in your eyes if you
tried to pretend to ruralize. Everybody hasn’t as much imagination as
Young John Chivery, who said the flapping of sheets and towels in his
face ‘made him feel like he was in groves.’”
“Fairhill has preserved the rural element remarkably well, when one
considers her tens of thousands of inhabitants, her water supply and
electric lights,” said March; “and luckily one doesn’t need much
imagination to help out his enjoyment of the world on this Sunday
afternoon.”
His tone was so respectfully familiar, his bearing so easy, the girls
forgot that he was a stranger.
“It wasn’t your Dickens who said it, but you can, perhaps, tell me who
did write a verse that has been running in my unpoetical brain ever
since I entered your fairy bower,” he said by and by.
“The orchard’s all a-flutter with pink;
Robins’ twitter, and wild bees’ humming
Break the song with a thrill to think
How sweet is life when summer is coming.
“That is the way it goes, I believe. It is a miracle for me to
recollect so much rhyme. The robins and bees must have helped me out.”
“I wish I knew who did that!” sighed Hester. “Oh! what it must be to
write poetry or paint pictures!”
March’s glance of mirthful suspicion changed at sight of the knotted
brow and wistful eyes.
“One ought to be thankful for either gift,” he said quietly. “I was
thinking just now how I should like to make a picture of what I saw as
I ran up the hill. May I try some day?”
Hetty drew herself up and looked inquiry. Hester’s hands fluttered,
painful scarlet throbbed into her cheeks.
“Can you draw? Do you paint? Are you an _artist_?” bringing out the
last word in an excited whisper.
March was too much touched to trifle with her agitation. “I try to be,”
he answered simply, almost reverently.
“And would you—may I—would it annoy you—Hetty! ask him. You know what I
want!”
“My darling!” The cooing, comforting murmur was passing sweet. “Be
quiet for one moment, and you can put what you want to say into words.”
As the fragile form quivered under her hand, a light seemed to dawn
upon her. “You see, Mr. Gilchrist, my niece loves pictures better than
anything else and—she never has met a real, live artist before,” the
corners of her mouth yielding a little. “She has had a great longing to
know how the beautiful things that delight her are made—how they grow
into being. Is that it, dear?”
Hester nodded, her eyes luminous with tears she strove to drive back.
March struck his hands together with boyish glee.
“I have it! I will make a study of ‘orchards all a-flutter with pink,’
and you shall see me put in every stroke. May I begin to-morrow?
Blossom-time is short. How unspeakably jolly! May we, Miss Alling?”
The proposition was so ingenuous, and Hester’s imploring eyes were so
eloquent, that the referee turned pale under the heart-wrench demur
cost her.
“Dear!” she said soothingly, to the invalid, “it would not be right
to promise until we have consulted your mother. Mr. Gilchrist is
very kind. Indeed”—raising an earnest face whose pallor set him to
wondering—“you must believe that we do appreciate your goodness in
offering her this great happiness. But—Hester, love, we _must_ ask
mamma.”
March had seen Mrs. Wayt in church that forenoon, and been struck anew
with her delicate loveliness. Could she, with that Madonna face, be
a stern task-mistress? With the rise of difficulties, his desire to
paint the picture increased. That this unfortunate child, with the
artist soul shining piteous through her big eyes, should see the fair
creation grow under his hand had become a matter of moment. As poor
Hester’s effort to express acquiescence or dissent died in a hysterical
gurgle, and a shamed attempt to hide her hot face with her hands, the
tender-hearted fellow arose to take leave.
“I won’t urge my petition until you have had time to think it over.
But I don’t withdraw it. May I bring my sister over to see you both?
She is fond of pictures, too, and dabbles in watercolors on her own
account. Excuse me—and Thor—for our unintentionally unceremonious
introduction to your notice, and thank you for a delightful half-hour.
Good-afternoon!”
Hetty looked after him, as his elastic stride measured off the orchard
slope—a contradiction of strange mortification and strange delight
warring within her. It was as if a young sun-god had paused in the
entrance of a gruesome cave, and talked familiarly with the prisoners
chained to the walls. With all her resolute purpose to oppose the
intimacy which she foresaw must arise from the proposed scheme of
picture-making, she could not ignore the straining of her spirit upon
her bonds.
“Oh!” wailed Hester, lowering her hands, “I didn’t mean to be so
foolish! I will be brave and sensible, but you know, Hetty, I have
never had anything like this offered to me before. It is like dying
with thirst with water before one’s eyes, to give it up. And when he
said: ‘Blossom-time is short,’ it rushed over me that I never had any—I
can never have any. I am just a withered, useless, ugly bud that will
never be a flower.”
An agony of sobs followed.
“My precious one!” Hetty’s tears flowed with hers. “Do I ever forget
your sorrows? Are you listening, dear? If possible, you shall have this
one poor little pleasure. You must trust your mother’s love and mine,
to deny you nothing we can safely give. If we must refuse, it is only
bearing a little more!”
The going out of the May day was calm as with remembered happiness,
but the chill that lurks in the imperfectly tempered air of the
newborn season, awaiting the departure of the sun, was so pronounced
by seven o’clock that Hetty called upon Homer to build a fire in the
sitting room, where she and Hester were sitting. The children were
sent to bed at eight o’clock. Mrs. Wayt was lying down in her chamber
with one of her frequent headaches, rallying her forces against her
husband’s return from the long walk he found necessary “to work off the
cumulative electricity unexpended by the day’s services.”
“I belong to the peripatetic school of philosophy,” he said to a
parishioner whom he met two miles from home.
“He was forging ahead like a trained prize-fighter,” reported the
admiring pewholder to a friend. “Nothing of the sentimental weakling
about _him_!”
March and May Gilchrist, pausing upon the parsonage porch, at sound of
a voice singing softly and clearly within, saw, past a half-drawn sash
curtain, Hetty rocking back and forth in the firelight, with Hester in
her arms. The cripple’s head was thrown back slightly, bringing into
relief the small, fine-featured face and lustrous eyes. Her wealth
of hair waved and glittered with the motion of the chair like spun
gold. It might have been a young mother crooning to her baby in a sort
of chant, the words of which were distinctly audible to brother and
sister, the nearest window being lowered a few inches from the top.
Hester loved heat and light as well as a salamander, but could not
breathe freely in a closed room. To-night was one of her “bad times,”
and nothing but Hetty’s singing could win her a moderate degree of ease.
“Blow winds!” [sang Hetty]
“And waft through all the rooms
The snowflakes of the cherry blooms!
Blow winds! and bend within my reach
The fiery blossoms of the peach!
“O Life and Love! O happy throng
Of thoughts whose only speech is song!
O heart of man! canst thou not be
Blithe as the air is, and as free?”
March moved forward hastily to ring the bell. He felt like an
eavesdropping spy upon the unconscious girls. Without any knowledge of
the isolation and mutual dependence of the two, the visitors perceived
pathos in the scene—in the clinging helplessness of one and the
brooding tenderness expressed in the close clasp and bent head of the
other.
The singing ceased instantly at the sound of the gong. “By George! what
an alarm!” muttered March, discomfited by the clang succeeding his
touch. “And I gave it such a genteel pull!”
His attitude was apologetic still, when Mr. Wayt’s wife’s sister opened
the door.
“I seem fated to be heralded noisily!” he said regretfully. “I had as
little idea of the tone of your doorbell as you had of the power of
Thor’s lungs. Miss Alling, let me introduce my sister! She gave me no
peace until I brought her to see you.”
May extended her hand with unmistakable intention of good fellowship.
“I scolded him for stealing a march upon me this afternoon while I,
like a dutiful Christian, was in church,” she said. Her smile was her
brother’s, her blithe, refined tones her own. “But I mean to improve
my advantages the more diligently on that account.”
The genial persiflage had bridged over the always awkward transit from
front door to drawing room when the host is the conductor. It was the
more embarrassing in this case because the two meagerly furnished
parlors were unlighted except as a glimmer from the hall gas added to
the sense of space and emptiness.
“Allow me!” March took from Hetty’s fingers the match she had lighted,
and reached up to the chandelier. The white illumination flashed upon
a pleasing study of an up-looking manly face, with honest, hazel eyes,
drooping mustache, and teeth that gleamed in the smile attending the
question: “I hope your niece is none the worse for her fright?”
“Thank you! I think not. She is rather nervous than timid, and not
usually afraid of dogs.”
“I hope we can see her to-night?” May took up the word. “My brother
says she is such a dainty, bright little creature that I am impatient
to meet her.”
Hetty’s eyes glowed with gratitude and surprise. No other visitor
had ever named the afflicted daughter of the house in this tone. The
frank, cordial praise kept back no implication of pitying patronage.
Mr. Wayt’s wife’s sister had knocked about the world of churches and
parishes long enough to know that the perfect breeding which ignores
deformity without overlooking the deformed is the rarest of social
gifts. In any other circumstances, she would have refused steadfastly
to subject Hester to the scrutiny of a stranger. As it was, she
hesitated visibly.
“She is seldom able to receive company in the evening. But I will see
how she is feeling to-night.”
She had remarkable self-possession, as March had noted already. She got
herself out of the room without mumble or halt. She walked well, and
with a single eye to her destination, with no diffident conjectures as
to how she moved or looked. March had keen perceptions and critical
notions upon such points.
“What an interesting looking girl,” observed May, in an undertone.
And March, as cautiously—“I hope she will let us see the little one!
She is the jolliest grig you can conceive of.”
Both tried not to look about them while waiting for the hostess’
return. The place was forlornly clean, and the new carpets gave forth
the ungoodly smell of oily wool that nothing but time and use can
dissipate. Plaintive efforts to abolish stiffness were evident in
chairs grouped in conversational attitudes near the summer-fronted
fireplace, and a table pulled well away from the wall, with books and
photographs lying about on it. March could fancy Hetty doing these
things, then standing disheartened, in the waste of moquette, under the
consciousness that there was not one-fifth enough furniture for the
vast rooms. At this point, he spoke again subduedly:
“What possessed the church to build these desolate barns and call them
family parlors?”
May was a parish worker, and looked her surprise.
“A parsonage must have plenty of parlor room for church sociables.”
“Then those who use them ought to furnish them. Or, say! it wouldn’t be
amiss to keep them up as show places are abroad—by charging a shilling
admission fee.”
Hetty’s return saved him from deserved rebuke.
“My niece will be very happy to see you,” she reported, rather
formally, her eyes darkling into vague trouble or doubt as she said
it. On the way across the hall she added hurriedly to May: “We never
overpersuade her to meet strangers. In this case there was no need.”
May’s gloved hand sought hers with a swift, involuntary gesture. It was
the merest touch that emphasized the low “Thank you!” but both struck
straight home to Hetty’s heart. The Gilchrist tact was inimitable.
Hester lay upon a lounge, propped into a sitting posture with pillows.
Her hair and drapings were cunningly disposed. A casual eye would not
have penetrated the secret of the withered limbs and curved spine. A
red spot like a rose-leaf rested upon each cheek, her eyes shone, and
her silent smile revealed small, perfect teeth like a two-year-old
baby’s. She was so winsome that May stooped impulsively to kiss her as
she would a pretty child.
“I came to tell you how angry we all are—my father, mother, and I—with
my brother and his dog for scaring you to-day,” she said, seating
herself on an ottoman by the lounge, and retaining hold of the wee hand
until it ceased to twitch and burn in hers. “I did think Thor knew
better! His tail committed innumerable apologies to me when I told him
I hoped to see you this evening.”
March and Hetty, chatting together near the crackling wood fire, caught
presently sentences relative to colors and pencils and portfolios,
and slackened their talk to listen. May had elicited the confession
that Hester’s brush was a solace and the only pastime she had “except
reading and Hetty’s music.”
“But it’s only trying with me,” said the tuneless voice. “I have had no
teacher except Hetty.”
“My dear Hester!” cried the person named. “Be candid, and say ‘worse
than none!’”
Hester colored vividly at this evidence that her confidences to her
new friend were shared by others, but rallied gallantly to support her
assertion.
“She doesn’t think she has any talent for drawing, but she took
lessons for three months that she might teach me how to shade and
manage perspective, and use water colors. She and I amuse ourselves
with caricatures and all that, and I make drawings—very poor ones—to
illustrate poems and stories, while she reads to me, and I do a
little—you can’t imagine _how_ little and how badly!—in color. Just
bits, you know—grass and mossy sticks, and brambles running over
stones, and frost-bitten leaves—and such things. Hetty is always on the
lookout for studies for me. I cannot sit up long enough to undertake
anything more important if I had the skill. And I shouldn’t dare
venture to copy anything really beautiful—such as apple blossoms,” with
a short-lived smile at March that left a plait between her eyes.
Intercepting Hetty’s apprehensive glance, he smiled in return, but
forbore to introduce the petition left with them that afternoon. May
had been stringent on this point.
“Don’t allude to it this evening!” she enjoined upon him. “Nothing
is in worse taste than to use a first call as a lever for selfish
ends. I’ll run in to-morrow morning, and try my powers of persuasion.
Meantime, get your canvas and palette ready.”
Hetty’s spirits rose when she perceived that the exciting topic was
avoided. The four were in the swing of merry converse when the clock
struck nine, and, as if he had waited for the signal, Mr. Wayt walked
in. March, who sat by Hetty, saw her stiffen all over, and her eyes
sink to the floor. Hester began to cough irrepressibly—a hard, dry
hack, to quiet which Hetty went to get a glass of water. The pallor
of the pastor’s face had a bilious tinge; his eyes were sunken, his
whole appearance haggard and wild. Yet his greeting to the guests
was effusive, his flow of language unabated. Neither daughter nor
sister-in-law offered to second him. Hester’s roses faded, the ever
present fold between her eyebrows was almost a scowl. Hetty was coldly
imperturbable, and the Gilchrists soon made a movement to go.
Mr. Wayt stepped forward airily to accompany them to the door, Hetty
falling into the rear and parting from them with a grave bow upon the
threshold of the sitting room.
“My regards to your estimable parents,” said the host on the porch,
his pulpit tone carrying far through the night. “A clerical friend
of mine dubbed Judge Aaron Hollingshed of Chicago, an active elder
in his church, and his wife, who was a true mother in Israel—‘Aaron
and _her_!’ I already, in spirit, apply the like titles to Judge and
Mrs. Gilchrist. It is such spirited support as theirs that upholds the
hands of the modern Moses against the Amaleks of the day. Thank you for
calling, and good-night to you both.”