“But you have grown and changed out of all reason.”
“Minnesota did that! For the first time in my life I am not absolutely scrawny! We had such a splendid tour! Stephen was just royal, as much of a boy as either of us. We have climbed mountains, camped out, hunted and fished and everything! I did not want to come back.”
“I am glad to see you so much improved,” and mamma glanced him over with a sort of motherly pride.
He sat down on the step at her feet, and began to play with Edith who affected baby shyness. We did not have him long to ourselves though, for Nelly came and in a moment or two the children. They were all surprised.
I watched him as he talked. He was so much more fluent and self-possessed. It was not Stuart’s brightness, but more like Stephen’s reliance, and a peculiar command of self, an earnestness that sat well upon him.
“You cannot think how I wanted to see this place once more. How good you were to me when I lay sick up-stairs. Miss Rose, do you remember getting me some honeysuckle blooms one afternoon? I shall always associate them with you. I shall be glad to the latest day of my life that Stephen sent me here, though I made a desperate fight to go to Lake George with some school-fellows.”
“It was fortunate that you did not, for you would have been ill in any event,” answered mamma quietly.
“Yes. How is—everybody? And that Mr. Fairlie is married? Does Miss Churchill come as she used?”
She was still among our best friends, we told him. Fanny was there spending the day.
Presently papa returned and he was full of joy at the improvement. Why, it was almost like having a boy of one’s very own! I would not have believed that he could be so agreeable if I had not seen it, or else I wondered if we had not made a mistake last summer.