“A divine comedy,” said Madeline and laughed again. “Just see what a walk in the open air will do for a body.”
CHAPTER XVIII
EASTER
Easter came late in April, when, to match man’s mood, it should come; for the world was alive with new vitality. The south winds were infusing their wonder-working heats, and the bluebirds flashing their streaks of color through branches that felt the stir of sap, amid buds that strained to burst. There was the smell of growth where bits of “secret greenness” hid behind the dead leaves of last fall.
On Saturday evening Mrs. Lenox welcomed the same circle that had met at her home the November before, and Lena’s little heart glowed with the soul-satisfying sense of the difference to her. Then she had been a social waif, received on sufferance. Now she was one of them. She could even afford to have her own opinions. The very memory of past discomforts doubled the present blessedness, and Mr. Lenox looked only half the size that he had six months before. It was a long stride to have taken in half a year, and with reason she congratulated herself on her cleverness. In Mr. Lenox’s gravity of manner as he took her in to dinner, she perceived only respect for Mrs. Percival, not knowing that he had in mind the small episode of the Chatterer, which his wife and Miss Elton had agreed to ignore.
“What very sensible people we are!” exclaimed Mrs. Lenox as she surveyed her small table party. “We shall spend to-morrow in hunting for anemones instead of looking at our neighbors’ spring fineries; we shall catch the first robin at his love song, instead of listening to the cut and dried, much-practised church music; and we shall find rest to our souls. Dick, I am sure you need it. You look worn out. I’m afraid politics is proving a hard mistress.”
“I wonder if it is possible to do too much,” said Dick, rousing himself, with manifest languor. “It’s only the way he does it that plays a man out. Here’s Ellery, now, who works like a galley slave and looks as fresh as the proverbial daisy.”
“Well, come, you are criticizing yourself even more severely,” Mr. Lenox said. “You’ll have to learn the secret, Dick, of letting your arms and legs and brain work for you, while your inner man remains at peace. That’s the only way an American man can live in these hustling days; and if you don’t master it, the young men will come in and carry you out by the time that you are fifty.”