“’Sure, I will walk with you, my lad,
As love ordains me to,--
To Heaven’s door, and through, my lad,
O I will walk with you.’”
“Say,” she startled the lovers by her remark, “if that ain’t the prettiest piece I ever heard!”
“Think so?” said Martin kindly. “I agree with you.”
“Yes, it sounds nice but the meanin’ is what abody likes.”
The hired girl went back to her place in the other room. But Amanda turned to the man beside her and said, “Romance in the heart of Millie! Who would guess it?”
“There’s romance everywhere,” Martin told her. “Millie’s heart wouldn’t be the fine big thing it is if she didn’t keep a space there for love and romance.”
CHAPTER XXV
The Heart of Millie
The Reist farmhouse, always a busy place, was soon rivaling the proverbial beehive. Mrs. Reist, to whom sentiment was ever a vital, holy thing, to be treasured and clung to throughout the years, had long ago, in Amanda’s childhood, begun the preparation for the time of the girl’s marriage. After the fashion of olden times the mother had begun the filling of a Hope Chest for her girl. Just as she instilled into the youthful mind the homely old-fashioned virtues of honesty, truthfulness and reverence for holy things which made Amanda, as she stood on the threshold of a new life, so richly dowered in spiritual and moral acquisitions, so had the mother laid away in the big wooden chest fine linens, useful and beautiful and symbolic of the worth of the bride whose home they were destined to enrich.