Chapter Seven

"Why didn't I take a carriage and drive after them?" he wondered, and then he went home and pondered over the events of the day, and asked himself what "our Mag" would say and do if she only knew on whose ears it had fallen.

"It would nearly kill the sensitive little thing," he said to himself, " and I'll not repeat a word of it, lest it in some roundabout way it should get back to her." These were among his last thoughts before he went to sleep that night, and this accounted, he fancied, for the fact that her image, sweet and fresh, came to him with his first waking ones next day. But why she should go wherever he went, why she should flit in and out of his office was not so obvious. He laughed at himself, said it would pass in a day or two, and entered into his usual pursuits with unusual ardor.

"I have got off the business track," he thought, "by absence from it; and my brain is confused by the journey yesterday." But when he was riding up town after his day's work was over, she came into the stage, too, and when he sat down to dinner, she sat down by his side. Oh, Maggie, how could you? He tried to shake her off in vain, and as he knew Aunt Jane would be expecting him in the evening, he set forth for her house, and our Maggie went with him. Or rather, there she was at Aunt Jane's side, in a pretty blue dress; she and her sister Annie, in living form.

Conscious as he was of the way in which she had filled his thoughts all day, and quite taken by surprise by finding her here, he was thrown entirely off his guard, and stood before the two quite speechless.

But he soon recovered himself, and when he heard both girls address Mrs. Faulkner as "Aunt Jane," it flashed upon him where and when he had seen Maggie before.

"I hope, my dear, cousins," he began, recovering his usual ease of manner, "that I find you quite well after yesterday's journey?"

"We are quite well, dear cousin," said Annie, laughing, "only Maggie is troubled with a few anxious fears lest you may have overheard some of our careless talk; but you didn't, I am sure?"

Never was mortal man more tempted to tell a downright lie. But he got off, for the time at least, by declaring--

"Of course I heard every word, and wrote it down in my journal before I slept."

"Ah, I knew you couldn't have heard," said Annie, "though to be sure if you had, no harm would have been done." And then they passed a pleasant evening. Horace spoke of his father, and finding both girls interested, read a little record he had made of his pleasant sayings during his last days on earth.

"And you were just returning from this beautiful death-bed yesterday?" asked Maggie. "Then how our laughing and talking so near you must have jarred upon you!"

"On the contrary, it quite diverted my mind from some sober thoughts," he returned.

"Then you did hear, after all!" she cried, crimsoning to her very fingers' end. "Oh, Annie, what did we say!"

"You spoke of me, for one thing," said Horace, quietly.

"Now I know you did not hear," said Maggie, "for we never once mentioned you."

But she did not add, as she might have done, "I thought of you too much to speak of you," and after a delightful evening he went away in such an enraptured state of mind that he left his cane behind him, which made it necessary that he should go for it the next evening.

Meanwhile, he was becoming a marvel to himself. He caught himself twenty times while sitting in his office alone, or when passing through the streets, mentally conversing with Maggie; telling her his whole story, even confiding to her to what new and blessed heights of Christian faith and love he had climbed of late. And how he felt that he had her full sympathy, though he heard only one little sentence about her that said she prayed when she was greatly moved, whatever she might do at other times.

"I never knew anything like it!" he said to himself at last in despair. "It must be that my father's death makes me tender towards everybody."

Yet it was not to commune with everybody that he presented himself at Aunt Jane's again so soon; it was only to get his cane.

Aunt Jane could hardly repress a smile when she saw Horace enter, for she had happened to see the cane in the hall, and knew it to be his, because it was her own gift to him, and she knew that, dependent as he was upon it, he had not left it by accident.

"I hope the young ladies are well," he said, after waiting some time in the vain hope of seeing them make their appearance.

"They are quite well," she said, but was so cruel as not to explain the occasion of their absence.

"What a precious fool I have made of myself by coming this evening!" he thought. "For of course I can't come tomorrow; it would look too marked."

"I was going to invite you to dine with us tomorrow," said Aunt Jane, "and take the girls to church." Horace started.

"Don't look so amazed," she said, " I only put two and two together. You left your cane last night as an excuse for coming again, and you have sat two minutes in perfect silence, meditating, instead of making yourself agreeable. One of my girls, or both of them, has caught you at last."

"Oh, no!" he cried! "Not but that they are pleasant girls enough, but--"

Aunt Jane smiled.

"Don't talk to me about ‘pleasant girls,'" said she, "but tell me what it is you want? Why, hitherto you have been in such a hurry to come and boast of having fallen in love, that now I hardly know you." Then thinking she had gone too far, she added--

"They're gone to dine with Mrs. White. She has known them this long time, and is fond of them both."

Horace feigned indifference, and asked some trifling questions about a blue stocking that peeped from a dainty little basket upon the table.

"That's Maggie's work," said Aunt Jane. "What a pity that she forgot to take it with her! We wanted to send off a barrel tomorrow."

"I should think you would need a hogshead instead of a barrel," said Horace, casting his eyes about the room, which, like many a loyal parlor during the war, was full of shirts, socks, handkerchiefs, in short, everything conceivable and inconceivable that a soldier could want.

"So I told the girls when I saw the trunk they brought with them. They must have worked like two beavers. With all they have to do I can't imagine how they accomplished so much."

"Aunt Jane," cried Horace, abruptly, "do they know about--about my leg?"

"I suppose so. But let me think. No, on the whole I doubt if they do."

"They must have observed by lameness."

"Perhaps so."

"Unless they ask a direct question about it, will you be silent as to the cause?"

Aunt Jane looked at him with great surprise.

Was he going to try to gain the affections of one of them under false colors?

But his honest face rebuked this unjust suspicion.

"It will be quite easy to be silent," she replied. "Both girls have too much delicacy to ask questions on such a subject."

"I should think one of them might have," he returned. "Do you know, Aunt Jane, that I have never been introduced to either of them, and do not know whether they are the Misses Snodgrass or the Misses Snooks?"

"Upon my word, then, you made yourself quite familiar last evening, calling them your cousins, and all that."

"But you know I had met them on the train and overheard any quantity of lively talk on the way."

"Indeed? Then I am ashamed of you that you did not warn them that you were listening."

"Do you call it listening when a parcel of girls talk loud enough to edify the whole train?"

"Now I know Maggie Wyman never did that!"

"Perhaps Maggie in particular did not, but I know the young ladies in general did. How should I distinguish who said this or who said that, when I sat the whole time with my back to them? And as to any little secrets I was so lucky as to hear, I should scorn to repeat them."

"Secrets indeed! Maggie Wyman shouting her secrets into the ears of the whole train!"

"Indeed, Aunt Jane, I never insinuated that she did. So, I am to come to dinner tomorrow night? I wonder if I can? I half promised to dine with Ben Lowell."

"Very well, dine with him then and welcome," she said, demurely.

"Oh, I daresay he'll let me off. Yes, I'll come. Anything to please you. Where did you pick up these fair maidens?"

"Oh, it's a long story, and I can't go into details. I have known them ever since they were little girls. After the death of my husband and my son, my health was all broken up, and I wanted to get out of the city into some quiet place, where I could brood over my grief. This, you know, was before I purchased my present country seat. I advertised, and friends made inquiries for me, and at last I somehow wandered off to a little mountain village whose chief attraction lay in the fact of its obscurity and isolation. The father of these girls was the minister of the single church there, and he began to come and see me. I had never met such a single-hearted, unworldly man; at the very first interview he did me good, though somewhat younger than I. Then he brought his wife, and by degrees they roused me from the despair into which I had fallen, and gave me my first conception of a ‘heart at leisure from itself.' I was boarding at a common country tavern, amid many discomforts, and really suffered for want of many things that my ill-health made necessary. Almost every day, therefore, one or both of these girls, then six and eight years old, came to bring me something prepared for me by their mother's own hands. She did it from the purest kindness and sympathy; inferring that poverty only could induce me to take up my abode in such poor quarters. I naturally wanted to make some return, and as my health began to improve proposed that the little girls should come to me for daily lessons. This proved to be as great a benediction to me as to them; I learned to love them dearly, and they filled up and kept warm some of the empty places in my heart. The whole thing ended in my going to the parsonage to spend summer after summer, and gaining in the beautiful Christian home there a new conception of this life and of the life to come. Mrs. Wyman was not one of the sort who could say much on religious subjects with her lips, but she said many things in her life; and Mr. Wyman preached Christ to me as truly out of the pulpit as in it. I never can repay the debt of gratitude towards those who are a spiritual help to us; don't you think so?"

"Indeed, we do!" he said, warmly. "Think what you were to me down there in the hospital."

"The girls," she went on, "proved to be charming little scholars; I never tried to do anything with the boys; they were younger, and, besides, I couldn't manage them; they were always startling me with their noise, and I really had no health with which to bear what their mother only laughed at. As Maggie and Annie grew older, I sent them away to school for several winters, one at a time, for their mother could not spare both at once. This winter Mrs. Wyman has a sister with her, and so she could let them come together, and I want them to have a right good time; they deserve it, for they have a hard life of it at home."

Horace hoped she would go on all night, but at this point in her discourse it became necessary for her to set the heel of a great blue stocking she was knitting, and she warned him that he was not to speak while she counted her stitches and performed that mysterious act.

"Why, how is this?" she said, suddenly, "my yarn is giving out! I thought I wound enough to last a week. I shall have to steal some from the girls. Hand me that large ball, and I will wind, or rather you shall wind off, a part of it for me. Have you a bit of paper about you? Or stay, here is an envelope in the work-basket, you can wind upon that. Meanwhile, excuse me a moment, I must look for the mate to this stocking."

Horace took the envelope and was proceeding to fold it in such a form as would make it available for his purpose, when his eye caught the word "Horace" written upon it in pencil; he colored, and look about him with a guilty air; it had come from Maggie's basket; would she miss it? Must he return it? Another glance revealed the address in a free, manly hand--"Miss Annie Wyman." It wasn't Maggie's after all, then? At any rate there could be no harm in keeping it; that one word "Horace" told no secret, and yet it somehow seemed to entitle him to keep possession of the mutilated paper on which it had been hastily scribbled. He lost no time, therefore, in thrusting it into his pocket, substituting another for it, and when Aunt Jane returned she found him so clumsily at work in winding her ball that she snatched it from him.

He was now quite eager to get home to study his prize at his leisure, and set his face in that direction, with a light heart. Yes, there it was, in a graceful, very original hand, his own name, over and over and over again; but whose hand had traced the word? Annie's, no doubt, he said with a sigh; but then didn't the paper come from Maggie's basket, and hadn't Maggie meant to take that basket with her? The envelope had evidently had yarn wound upon it, for it folded, almost of itself, into a compact, square form; it did not follow that she who had written his name upon it cared for him a fig; but yet this look like it. Perhaps it was Maggie after all: perhaps she had begun to forgive him for leaving the army, and was beginning to--well, to what? He dared not ask; and then the image of a poor, disappointed fellow, with the empty coat-sleeve and the red scar, came and whispered, "Why shouldn't my name be Horace, as well as yours?"

It is amazing what mountains we make out of mole-hills when we are in love; into what Koh-i-noors we can transfer grains of sand.

To be continued ...

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