The small boy wondered what ailed his mother, why she was not properly shocked. Why did she gather him into her arms and whisper something that sounded exactly like, “Thank God!”
“It’s all right,” she told him. “You mustn’t tell; that’s their secret.”
“Oh, is it all right? Then I won’t tell. Mart says I can keep a secret good.”
But Martin and Amanda decided to take the mother into the happy secret. “Look at my face,” the girl said. “I can’t hide my happiness. We might as well tell it.”
“Mother!” Martin’s voice rang through the house. At the sound a happy, white-capped woman wiped her eyes again on the corner of her gingham apron and mounted the stairs to give her blessing to her boy and the girl who had crowned him with her woman’s love.
The announcement of the troth was received with gladness at the Reist farmhouse. Mrs. Reist was happy in her daughter’s joy and lived again in memory that hour when the same miracle had been wrought for her.
“Say,” asked Philip, “I hope you two don’t think you’re springing a surprise? A person blind in one eye and not seeing out of the other could see which way the wind was blowing.”
“Oh, Phil!” Amanda replied, but there was only love in her voice.
“It must be nice to be so happy like you are,” said Millie.
“Yes, it must be,” Uncle Amos nodded his head in affirmation. He looked at the hired girl, who did not appear to notice him. “I just wish I was twenty years younger,” he added.