The gentleman made himself very much at home, as she eagerly opened the letter, and would not answer a question till she had read it. Then he was ready to tell her all she wished to hear, and such good news, that she scarcely knew how to bear it.
Mrs. Gilman knew from the letter that Mr. Hadley brought it. He had left Sam in charge of the ranch, he said, and came to the States, partly “to see if they were still standing,” and partly to take her back with him. He and Sam had talked it over until they thought it was the best thing to be done. He wanted a housekeeper, that would not go off and get married the day she landed, and Sam wanted his mother and the girls. He wanted a dairy, and Mrs. Gilman was the very one to manage it,—butter was selling at a dollar a pound, and they would go partnership in it if she was willing. Sam was too valuable a hand on the farm to waste his time in housekeeping, and had been willing to enter into bonds for Abby’s good care of the chicken-house. “It would be a shame,” he said, “to take Sam out of the country; he would do better there than he could ever do in the States, and she would see him in Congress yet, if he made as popular a man as he was boy; but if Mrs. Gilman wouldn’t come out, Sam would come home, and that would be the last of him.”
There was no end to the praises that he lavished on the young ranchero, for so he began to call himself; on his honesty and industry, his perseverance and his good sense. His pies and his ploughing, Hadley declared, could not be beaten in the valley, and he didn’t believe his sisters could hem a towel or make a flannel shirt better.
Mrs. Gilman actually laughed at this singular list of accomplishments, and began to feel as if she had known Sam’s friend a long time. They got on very fast indeed. Hadley thought to himself he could see Sam’s smile in his mother’s eyes, and they had just that clear, honest look. He was not in the least disappointed—and felt sure he should carry her back with him, impossible as she seemed to think it at first. Mrs. Gilman did not wonder that Sam’s letter praised him so, and hardly knew how to show him how sincerely thankful and grateful she was.
Abby and Hannah came home in fine spirits. “Ben had driven them in the cutter, and had tipped them out in a snow-drift on Shingle Camp, and they had such fun! and such a splendid dinner, and Mrs. Chase had sent—”
But here the young ladies became suddenly aware of the presence of a stranger, and became as quiet, and shy, and awkward in a moment, as they had been gleeful and graceful before.
Mr. Hadley did not intend this should last; he liked their faces much better lighted up by fun and frolic, than when they settled themselves on the edges of two chairs, stiff, little country girls.
“Well, what did Mrs. Chase send, Abby?—this must be Abby,” he said, pulling the bashful child towards him—“something good, I hope, for your mother has not given me any supper yet. Let’s see”—and off came the clean towels in quick order, as he set the dishes out of the big basket on the table. “Cold ham—very good—apple pie, mince pie, better and better—goose pie—”