Rose dropped her hands, looked down at the blue eggs in her lap, and throwing her arms around his neck, kissed him three or four times.
The farmer and Mrs. Mason looked at each other, and laughed softly. The boy heard them, sprang down from the wheel, and dashed into the house, where no one could see what a great baby he was ready to make of himself. Then he watched the wagon drive off through a flood of blinding tears, while little Rose flung kisses back at random, sobbing as if her heart would break, and wondering if any of them would reach him.
When the farmer returned from his ten miles' drive into New Haven, he brought news that a steamboat lay at the foot of "Long Wharf," ready to sail in half an hour after Mrs. Mason reached it, and that he saw her go on board in great spirits, with Rose, who had cried all the way, but seemed a little pacified by the sight of the broad waters, and the great puffing boat in which she was about to cross them.
Nelson Thrasher happened to be standing near when the farmer said this, and one of the rare smiles I have spoken of crossed his face, but he made no observations, and soon took a cross-cut through the fields which led him by Mrs. Allen's, on his way home. Katharine was watching for him at the back window. She had heard of Mrs. Mason's journey, and exulted a little when Nelson passed the house on his way to Falls Hill, an hour after she had started. All that night she had been troubled lest he should wish to bid the widow farewell; for, spite of herself, a lingering distrust still kept its hold on her heart, when she remembered the conversation of that evening.
Thrasher saw her at the window, and made a signal, which soon brought her outside of the stone wall, and under a huge apple tree, which flung its branches across it and into the garden.
Never since his return had Thrasher seemed so cheerful. He even inquired after the old lady with something of interest, and spoke of the time when she would regard him with less prejudice. All this gave Katharine a lighter heart; her beauty, which had been dimmed by adversity of late, bloomed out again. If not so stately as Mrs. Mason, she was far more lovely, and her fair, sweet face was mobile with sentiments which the widow could not have understood. Compared to that woman, she was like the apple blossoms of May contrasted with autumn fruit—one a child of the pure, bright spring, appealing to the imagination; the other a growth of storm, sunshine, and dew, mellowing down from its first delicate beauty to a perfection of ripeness which sense alone can appreciate. There existed elements in that young creature's character from which the best poetry of life is wrought. Heroism, self-abnegation, endurance, and truthfulness—all these rendered her moral character beautiful as her person.
But, alas! our future pages will prove all this. Why should we attempt to foreshadow in words a destiny and a nature like hers? It is enough that she looked lovely as an April morning that bright day, as she stood under the apple tree, leaning against the mossy old wall, talking to her husband, sometimes with her lips, sometimes with her wonderful eyes, which said a thousand loving things that her voice refused to utter. He fell into the current of her cheerfulness, and chatted pleasantly, till the slanting shadows warned her that the tea hour had arrived, and that her mother would be impatient. With his kisses warm upon her mouth, she went singing into the house, happy and rich in sudden joyousness.
CHAPTER XX.
ANOTHER SEPARATION.
It was about two weeks after Mrs. Mason's departure, when Thrasher began to talk of going to sea again. This depressed his parents greatly. They had hoped that his attachment to Katharine Allen would have kept him at the homestead. Thus they had carefully avoided any allusion to the subject of his departure, satisfied that every thing was progressing to forward their wishes. When he spoke of going away in the course of another week, it was a terrible shock to them, and seemed a painful subject to himself.