“Isabella.” It was David’s
voice in her ear—a voice full of tenderness
and pleading—the voice of the young wooer
of her girlhood—“Is it too late to
ask you to forgive me? I’ve been a stubborn
fool—but there hasn’t been an hour
in all these years that I haven’t thought about
you and our baby and longed for you.”
Isabella Spencer had hated this man; yet her hate
had been but a parasite growth on a nobler stem, with
no abiding roots of its own. It withered under
his words, and lo, there was the old love, fair and
strong and beautiful as ever.
“Oh—David—I—was—all—to—blame,”
she murmured brokenly.
Further words were lost on her husband’s lips.
When the hubbub of handshaking and congratulating
had subsided, Isabella Spencer stepped out before
the company. She looked almost girlish and bridal
herself, with her flushed cheeks and bright eyes.
“Let’s go back now and have supper, and
be sensible,” she said crisply. “Rachel,
your father is coming, too. He is coming to
stay,”—with a defiant glance
around the circle. “Come, everybody.”
They went back with laughter and raillery over the
quiet autumn fields, faintly silvered now by the moon
that was rising over the hills. The young bride
and groom lagged behind; they were very happy, but
they were not so happy, after all, as the old bride
and groom who walked swiftly in front. Isabella’s
hand was in her husband’s and sometimes she
could not see the moonlit hills for a mist of glorified
tears.
“David,” she whispered, as he helped her
over the fence, “how can you ever forgive me?”
“There’s nothing to forgive,” he
said. “We’re only just married.
Who ever heard of a bridegroom talking of forgiveness?
Everything is beginning over new for us, my girl.”
Miss Rosetta Ellis, with her front hair in curl-papers,
and her back hair bound with a checked apron, was
out in her breezy side yard under the firs, shaking
her parlor rugs, when Mr. Nathan Patterson drove in.
Miss Rosetta had seen him coming down the long red
hill, but she had not supposed he would be calling
at that time of the morning. So she had not
run. Miss Rosetta always ran if anybody called
and her front hair was in curl-papers; and, though
the errand of the said caller might be life or death,
he or she had to wait until Miss Rosetta had taken
her hair out. Everybody in Avonlea knew this,
because everybody in Avonlea knew everything about
everybody else.
But Mr. Patterson had wheeled into the lane so quickly
and unexpectedly that Miss Rosetta had had no time
to run; so, twitching off the checked apron, she stood
her ground as calmly as might be under the disagreeable
consciousness of curl-papers.
“Good morning, Miss Ellis,” said Mr. Patterson,
so somberly that Miss Rosetta instantly felt that
he was the bearer of bad news. Usually Mr. Patterson’s
face was as broad and beaming as a harvest moon.
Now his expression was very melancholy and his voice
positively sepulchral.
