“Home is a blessed freedom, Yanna. At your own fireside, you can be a law unto yourself. You can speak the thing you like, from morning to night.”
“The papers say the Filmers are Woodsome people. Do you remember them?”
“I never saw the present Mr. Filmer until I made my contract with him. I can just recollect his father, old Dominie Filmer, in his flowered dressing-gown, and his velvet cap. We did not sit in his church; but Adam Kors talks a great deal about him. He says he preached sermons hard to understand, and full of sharp words. I dare say he was a good man, for Adam tells of him being puzzled and troubled at living longer than the orthodox Scriptural three-score-years-and-ten. But he died at last—pretty well off.”
“Most ministers die poorly off.”
“Dominie Filmer was wise in his generation. He not only looked for mansions in the sky, he had also a reasonable respect for the land around Woodsome—and for shares in the railways, and things of that kind. But no one in his day could speak ill of him; and his children and grandchildren speak very well of him. And this friend of yours, Rose Filmer, will be his granddaughter.”
“Yes. I hope she will call soon. If she delays too long, it will be no kindness. If she does not call at all, I think I shall hate her.”
“No, Yanna. Anger and hate are not for you to bother with. They are such a dreadful waste of life. Why should you let a person whom you dislike, or despise, take possession of you, and of your mind, and occupy your thoughts, and run your precious time to their idea? That is a poor business, Yanna.”
Here the conversation ceased, but the next morning Adriana was on the watch for her friend. And about noon Rose came. She was driving herself in a pretty dog-cart, for she had determined as she dressed for her visit, to take no servant. She did not know what kind of a house Adriana lived in, or in what situation she might find her. For Rose’s experience of life had not given her any precedent by which she could judge of the social environments of a stone-builder; and she said softly as she pinned on her hat: “Yes, I shall go alone. It will be kinder to Yanna. Servants will talk. They might even wonder if she is not one of our relations; these Woodsome people have made such a stir about our being ‘native.’”
She drove well, and was charmed and excited by her rapid movement down the hills, and through the 17 wooded lanes. Entering the village, she asked for Mr. Van Hoosen’s house, and it was readily pointed out. She was a little astonished. It was a roomy, colonial dwelling, surrounded by well-kept grounds. Horse-chestnuts arched the wide avenues, and the house stood in a grove of flowering fruit trees. A boy who was rolling turf took her horse’s head, and she stepped to the spotless door stone, with a decided access of affection. Adriana came running down the stairs to meet her. They kissed each other, and buried in the kiss all their small differences and offences.