John Ward, Preacher. Margaret Wade Campbell Deland

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СКАЧАТЬ fact is, Lois, you don't like Ward. Now, he is a good fellow; yes, good is just the word for him. Bless my soul, there's a pitch of virtue about him that is exhausting. But that's our fault," he added candidly.

      "Oh, I'll like him," Lois said quickly, "if he will just make Helen happy."

      The rector shook his head. "I know how you feel," he said, "and I acknowledge he is odd; that talk of his last night about slavery being a righteous institution"—

      "Oh, he didn't say that, father," Lois interrupted.

      —"was preposterous," continued Dr. Howe, not noticing her; "but he's earnest, he's sincere, and I have a great deal of respect for earnestness. And look here, Lois, you must not let anybody see you are not in sympathy with Helen's choice; be careful of that tongue of yours, child. It's bad taste to make one's private disappointments public. I wouldn't speak of it even to your aunt Deely, if I were you."

      He stooped down to pull some matted grass from about the roots of a laburnum-tree, whose dark leaves were lighted by golden loops of blossoms, "Thirty-eight years ago," he said, "your mother and I planted this; we had just come home from our wedding journey, and she had brought this slip from her mother's garden in Virginia. But dear me, I suppose I've told you that a dozen times. What? How to-day brings back that trip of ours! We came through Lockhaven, but it was by stage-coach. I remember we thought we were so fortunate because the other two passengers got out there, and we had the coach to ourselves. Your mother had a striped ribbon, or gauze—I don't know what you call it—on her bonnet, and it kept blowing out of the window of the coach, like a little flag. You young people can go further in less time, when you travel, but you will never know the charm of staging it through the mountains. I declare, I haven't thought of it for years, but to-day brings it all back to me!"

      They had reached the rectory porch, and Dr. Howe settled himself in his wicker chair and lighted his cigar, while Lois sat down on the steps, and began to dig small holes in the gravel with the stick her father had resigned to her.

      The flood of soft lamplight from the open hall door threw the portly figure of the rector into full relief, and, touching Lois's head, as she sat in the shadow at the foot of the steps, with a faint aureole, fell in a broad bright square on the lawn in front of the house. They had begun to speak again of the wedding, when the click of the gate latch and the swinging glimmer of a lantern through the lilacs and syringas warned them that some one was coming, and in another moment the Misses Woodhouse and their nephew stepped across the square of light.

      Miss Deborah and Miss Ruth were quite unconscious that they gave the impression of carrying Gifford about with them, rather than of being supported by him, for each little lady had passed a determined arm through one of his, and instead of letting her small hand, incased in its black silk mitt, rest upon his sleeve, pressed it firmly to her breast.

      Ashurst was a place where friendships grew in simplicity as well as strength with the years, and because these three people had been most of the morning at the rectory, arranging flowers, or moving furniture about, or helping with some dainty cooking, and then had gone to the church at noon for the wedding, they saw no reason why they should not come again in the evening. So the sisters had put on their second-best black silks, and, summoning Gifford, had walked through the twilight to the rectory. Miss Deborah Woodhouse had a genius for economy, which gave her great pleasure and involved but slight extra expense to the household, and she would have felt it a shocking extravagance to have kept on the dress she had worn to the wedding. Miss Ruth, who was an artist, the sisters said, and fond of pretty things, reluctantly followed her example.

      They sat down now on the rectory porch, and began to talk, in their eager, delicate little voices, of the day's doings. They scarcely noticed that their nephew and Lois had gone into the fragrant dusk of the garden. It did not interest them that the young people should wish to see, as Gifford had said, how the sunset light lingered behind the hills; and when they had exhausted the subject of the wedding, Miss Ruth was anxious to ask the rector about his greenhouse and the relative value of leaf mould and bone dressing, so they gave no thought to the two who still delayed among the flowers.

      This was not surprising. Gifford and Lois had known each other all their lives. They had quarreled and made up with kisses, and later on had quarreled and made up without the kisses, but they had always felt themselves the most cordial and simple friends. Then had come the time when Gifford must go to college, and Lois had only seen him in his short vacations; and these gradually became far from pleasant. "Gifford has changed," she said petulantly. "He is so polite to me," she complained to Helen; not that Gifford had ever been rude, but he had been brotherly.

      He once asked her for a rose from a bunch she had fastened in her dress. "Why don't you pick one yourself, Giff?" she said simply; and afterwards, with a sparkle of indignant tears in her eyes and with a quick impatience which made her an amusing copy of her father, she said to Helen, "I suppose he meant to treat me as though I was some fine young lady. Why can't he be just the old Giff?" And when he came back from Europe, she declared he was still worse.

      Yet even in their estrangement they united in devotion to Helen. It was to Helen they appealed in all their differences, which were many, and her judgment was final; Lois never doubted it, even though Helen generally thought Gifford was in the right. So now, when her cousin had left her, she was at least sure of the young man's sympathy.

      She was glad that he was going to practice in Lockhaven; he would be near Helen, and make the new place less lonely for her, she said, once. And Helen had smiled, as though she could be lonely where John was!

      They walked now between the borders, where old-fashioned flowers crowded together, towards the stone bench. This was a slab of sandstone, worn and flaked by weather, and set on two low posts; it leaned a little against the trunk of a silver-poplar tree, which served for a back, and it looked like an altar ready for the sacrifice. The thick blossoming grass, which the mower's scythe had been unable to reach, grew high about the corners; three or four stone steps led up to it, but they had been laid so long ago they were sunken at one side or the other, and almost hidden by moss and wild violets. Quite close to the bench a spring bubbled out of the hill-side, and ran singing through a hollowed locust log, which was mossy green where the water had over-flowed, with a musical drip, upon the grass underneath.

      They stood a moment looking towards the west, where a golden dust seemed blown across the sky, up into the darkness; then Lois took her seat upon the bench. "When do you think you will get off, Giff?" she said.

      "I'm not quite sure," he answered; he was sitting on one of the lower steps, and leaning on his elbow in the grass, so that he might see her face. "I suppose it will take a fortnight to arrange everything."

      "I'm sorry for that," Lois said, disappointedly. "I thought you would go in a few days."

      Gifford was silent, and began to pick three long stems of grass and braid them together. Lois sat absently twisting the fringe on one end of the soft scarf of yellow crepe, which was knotted across her bosom, and fell almost to the hem of her white dress.

      "I mean," she said, "I'm sorry Helen won't have you in Lockhaven. Of course Ashurst will miss you. Oh, dear! how horrid it will be not to have Helen here!"

      "Yes," said Gifford sympathetically, "you'll be awfully lonely."

      They were silent for a little while. Some white phlox in the girl's bosom glimmered faintly, and its heavy fragrance stole out upon the warm air. She pulled off a cluster of the star-like blossoms, and held them absently against her lips. "You don't seem at all impatient to get away from Ashurst, Giff," she said. "If I had been you, I should have gone to Lockhaven a month ago; everything is so sleepy here. Oh, if I were a man, wouldn't I just go out into the world!"

      "Well, СКАЧАТЬ