In Blue Creek Cañon

by Anna Chapin Ray

The whole Everett household had been radiant with its new happiness, during these last few weeks. It would have been enough for them all to have Ned brought back to life, after their terrible hours of suspense; and for days they hovered about the boy, almost unable to believe that their bright, affectionate, impish Ned was to remain with them, after all. Even Mrs. Pennypoker had cast aside her strict principles of discipline, and coddled him and fussed over him to her heart's content, while Wang openly prided himself on being the means of his recovery.

"Wang went 'way off out doors," he had confided to Louise; "all lonee; hollered heap loud to Up-in-Sky. Up-in-Sky no say anything; he sabe, all samee; came down heap quick to help Mas' Ned."

In the midst of this rejoicing there had come a cause for even increased happiness. On the morning after Ned had turned the dangerous corner, and started on his slow journey back into life once more, Dr. Brownlee had gone into the parlor where Mr. Everett sat writing letters, and had closed the door behind him. His stay was only a short one; then Mr. Everett came out, and went in search of Louise.

"Come, my girl," he said gently; "Winthrop is waiting for you. Your mother would have been very happy to-day, as happy as I am." And he led her to the parlor door; then he went away, and left them alone together.

To Louise, it had seemed as if the world had suddenly been created anew that spring. The days flew by like one long, happy dream, while she spent hour after hour amusing her brother during his tedious convalescence, or left him to Mrs. Pennypoker's care when she escaped to the parlor, to enjoy the doctor's short, but frequent calls. Ned had been as rapturous as his sister when the good news was told to him; and he had saluted the doctor as Brother Brownlee upon the occasion of his next visit.

"It's just too jolly," he had said, with the first return of his old, irrepressible manner. "I'd rather have you take Lou than anybody else I know; and I'm no end glad I helped it on. You know you'd never have come to the point, if I hadn't scared you both out of your senses; but"—he paused, and then asked wickedly, "but I say, Lou, what do you suppose the Reverend Gabriel will have to say about it?"

The Reverend Gabriel, in the mean time, had kept himself informed on the subject of Ned's illness, and although he had held himself at a prudent distance from all danger of infection, he had not neglected the young invalid. As soon as it was definitely known that the boy was on the way to recovery, Dr. Hornblower had sent him, through the safe medium of the post-office, a little book of "Sick-room Meditations," whose black cover bore the cheering design of a tomb under a pair of weeping willows. Though the gift was doubtless intended in all kindness, it was received with more amusement than gratitude, and Ned kept it under his pillow to read aloud choice bits from it, whenever Louise and Dr. Brownlee were together in his room.

But, during the weeks that the Reverend Gabriel had been unable to call at the Everetts'; he had been slowly making up his mind upon a matter of weighty importance; and now at length the time had come for him to carry out his intentions.

The Reverend Gabriel Hornblower, it should be stated, was a romantic soul; and, in his tanned, weather-beaten old body, there throbbed a heart as ardent as ever beat in the breast of a boy of eighteen. Its manifestations, however, were often a little eccentric, for its owner was as ignorant and unworldly as a child. For years he had fed his elderly imagination upon the most impassioned love scenes to be found in the pages of novel or biography. Unfortunately for him, there was nothing in the least modern about his literary taste; but he had confined his reading to the histories of the Evelinas and Cherubinas of yore, until his idea of the tender passion was as old-fashioned and stilted as the books from which it had been derived. Nevertheless, the Reverend Gabriel was becoming weary of boarding-house existence, and beginning to long for the comforts of home and the charms of conjugal society.

It would be hard to say whether the sight of Louise Everett's blonde beauty, or the contemplation of his own frayed cuffs and ragged buttonholes had been the moving cause; but the result was the same. Upon this particular afternoon, he had spent an hour in reading over one of his old favorites; then, seizing his hat and cane, with an air of desperate resolution, he had hurried out of the house, and up the street towards the Everetts'.