It came on to rain at noon, a sort of sullen autumn storm, with not much wind at first, but it would gain power at nightfall. Daffodil and her mother were sewing on some clothes for the boy, women had learned to make almost everything. It took time, too. There were no magic sewing machines. Grandmere was spinning on the big wheel the other side of the room, running to and fro, and pulling out the wool into yarn.
"Why so grave, child? Is it a thought of pity for the lieutenant?" and Mrs. Carrick gave a faint smile that would have invited confidence if there had been any to give. She could hardly relinquish the idea that her daughter might relent.
"Oh, no. One can hardly fix the fleeting thoughts that wander idly through one's brain. The loneliness of the woods when the squirrels hide in their holes, and no bird voices make merry. And bits of verses and remembrance of half-forgotten things. Is any one's mind altogether set upon work? There are two lives going on within us."
Barbe Carrick had never lived but the one life, except when her husband was with the army, and she was glad enough to lay down the other. Had it been wise for Daffodil to spend those months in Philadelphia? Yet she had accepted her old home cheerfully. And all unconsciously she had worked changes in it to her grandmother's delight. Now her father was prospering. They would be among the "best people" as time went on.
The storm lasted three days. There had been some hours of wild fury in it, when the trees groaned and split, and the rivers lashed themselves into fury. Then it cleared up with a soft May air, and some things took a second growth. There was a sort of wild pear tree at the corner of the garden, and it budded.
Daffodil did not take her accustomed walk up in the woods. Something held her back, but she would not allow to herself it was that. Instead, she took rides on Dolly in different directions. One day she went down to the shipyard with a message for her father. Mr. Andsdell stood talking with him. Her pulses suddenly quickened.
"Well, you've started at the right end," Bernard Carrick was saying. "This place has a big future before it. If it was a good place for a fort, it's a splendid place for a town. Philadelphia can't hold a candle to it, if she did have more than a hundred years the start. Why they should have gone way up the Delaware River beats me. Yes, come up to the house, and we'll talk it over."
Then they both turned to the young girl. There was a pleasurable light in Andsdell's eyes.
Afterward he walked some distance beside her horse. The storm, the beautiful weather since, the busy aspect of the town, the nothings that are so convenient when it is best to leave some things in abeyance. Then he said adieu and turned to his own street, where he had lodgings.
She went on with a curiously light heart. Her father had said, "Come up to the house," and she was glad she had not gone to the woods in the hope of meeting him.