"And mind," said Kitty, "you're to come to the wedding, whenever it is! I want you for my bridesmaid, and Roland Graeme is to be groomsman."
"Very well!" said Nora, laughing, and so they parted. Roland Graeme, chafing under the temporary imprisonment enforced by his wound and its effects, which had been both painful and tedious, regretted very much, when he heard of Miss Blanchard's approaching departure, that he should not be able to see her before she went. Something of this regret he had expressed to Dr. Blanchard, who still visited him occasionally. He was sitting by his open window, one warm May morning, thinking longingly of woods just bursting into leaf, and all the country sights and sounds to which he had been accustomed, long ago, when a note was brought to him. He knew that the handwriting was Miss Blanchard's and opened it eagerly. It did not take long to read the few cordial lines:
"Dear Mr. Graeme,
"I am so sorry I cannot see you before I go, to say Good-bye, and wish you God-speed. I was very sorry, too, to hear of your accident, but I trust you will soon be quite restored. I hope you will come by and by, to visit us at Rockland, which is always lovely in June. The change of air will do you so much good, my brother says, and my father bids me say that he will be delighted to make your acquaintance, and I shall be happy to show you all our sights, including Mr. Foster's model mills.
"Meantime, with kindest regards, believe me
"Your sincere friend,
"Nora Blanchard."
Roland read this note several times over, before he folded it up and put it carefully away. And the somewhat languid and wistful expression that his face had worn before, was brightened, now, with the pleasure caused by the kindly words and the still more pleasant vista it called up before him. The enforced rôle of an invalid had been to him a new and unwelcome experience, and the temporary prostration left by the injury, at a time when his naturally vigorous physique had been a good deal run down by overwork, was particularly trying to his energetic spirit. But the mental picture that the note had conjured up, of June and woods and flowers, added to the grateful sense of Miss Blanchard's kind consideration, appealed to the underlying, inextinguishable poetry of his nature, and sent his thoughts off on a refreshing day-dream, far away from the smoky factories, the feverish competitions, the exasperating wrongs, and all the tangles and worries of life in Minton.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
IN ARCADY.
"And what is so rare as a day in June?
Then, if ever, come perfect days;
Then Heaven tries the earth if it be in tune,
And over it softly her warm ear lays."
The familiar lines rose to Roland's lips, as he came out of the quiet little country inn at Rockland, on a charming Sunday morning in that fairest of months. He had arrived late the evening before; and had put up, in the first instance, at the little hotel. As he took a stroll that morning about the outskirts of the pretty village, nestling under the shelter of wooded hills, beside a placid little inland lake reflecting in its liquid mirror the weeds and hills in their first summer verdure, he thought of Thoreau's "Walden," and wished that he could set up a little hermitage of his own, somewhere amid these green recesses. But a hermitage would never have contented Roland Graeme. He was, first and essentially, a lover of man. Even now, his eye rested with strongest interest on the large group of buildings, surrounded by neat white cottages, which he knew by instinct was Mr. Foster's "model mills."
But, this morning, as be whiled away an hour or two before church-time, in leisurely lingering through the "vernal wood," the balmy odors and the birds carolling among the trees seemed of themselves to breathe a refreshing influence—smoothing out, as if by magic, the creases of the winter's toil and worry, and inspiring with new life his somewhat jaded spirits and overtaxed nervous system. And a stranger thing than this happened to him. With the new, marvellous beauty of the summer landscape, that burst on his gladdened eyes like a revelation, there seemed interfused a higher, more subtle influence. How, he knew not—such things pass our knowing—and doubtless many things led up to it; but there and then, it seemed to him that the chilling mists of doubt had almost passed away from his soul He felt that once more the beliefs of his childhood were realities to him, though in an infinitely grander and more spiritual conception of them. He felt the divine Father and Saviour, the brooding Spirit of love and strength, closer and more real than the lovely vision around him. And he felt that he should never lose them more.