Before Christie could get her breath after that somewhat
startling announcement, Mr. Power appeared, took in
the situation at a glance, gave them a smile that
was a benediction, and said heartily as he offered
a hand to each:
“Now I’m satisfied; I’ve watched
and waited patiently, and after many tribulations
you have found each other in good time;” then
with a meaning look at Christie he added slyly:
“But David is ‘no hero’ you know.”
She remembered the chat in the strawberry bed, laughed,
and colored brightly, as she answered with her hand
trustfully in David’s, her eyes full of loving
pride and reverence lifted to his face:
“I’ve seen both sides of the medal now,
and found it ’sterling gold.’ Hero
or not I’m content; for, though he ’loves
his mother much,’ there is room in his heart
for me too; his ‘old books’ have given
him something better than learning, and he has convinced
me that ‘double flowers’ are loveliest
and best.”
Mustered in.
Christie’s return was a very happy one,
and could not well be otherwise with a mother, sister,
and lover to welcome her back. Her meeting with
Letty was indescribably tender, and the days that
followed were pretty equally divided between her and
her brother, in nursing the one and loving the other.
There was no cloud now in Christie’s sky, and
all the world seemed in bloom. But even while
she enjoyed every hour of life, and begrudged the time
given to sleep, she felt as if the dream was too beautiful
to last, and often said:
“Something will happen: such perfect happiness
is not possible in this world.”
“Then let us make the most of it,” David
would reply, wisely bent on getting his honey while
he could, and not borrowing trouble for the morrow.
So Christie turned a deaf ear to her “prophetic
soul,” and gave herself up to the blissful holiday
that had come at last. Even while March winds
were howling outside, she blissfully “poked in
the dirt” with David in the green-house, put
up the curly lock as often as she liked, and told
him she loved him a dozen times a day, not in words,
but in silent ways, that touched him to the heart,
and made his future look so bright he hardly dared
believe in it.
A happier man it would have been difficult to find
just then; all his burdens seemed to have fallen off,
and his spirits rose again with an elasticity which
surprised even those who knew him best. Christie
often stopped to watch and wonder if the blithe young
man who went whistling and singing about the house,
often stopping to kiss somebody, to joke, or to exclaim
with a beaming face like a child at a party:
“Isn’t every thing beautiful?” could
be the sober, steady David, who used to plod to and
fro with his shoulders a little bent, and the absent
look in his eyes that told of thoughts above or beyond
the daily task.
