“I suppose we could take him,” said Abigail, seeing that the decision was virtually made already; “there's the corner room, which we don't often use. Only, if he should get worse on our hands—”
“Friend Speakman says there's no danger. He is only weak-breasted, as yet, and clerking isn't good for him. I saw the young man at the store. If his looks don't belie him, he's well-behaved and orderly.”
So it was settled that Richard Hilton the younger was to be an inmate of Friend Mitchenor's house during the summer.
II.
At the end of ten days he came.
In the under-sized, earnest, dark-haired and dark-eyed young man of three-and-twenty, Abigail Mitchenor at once felt a motherly interest. Having received him as a temporary member of the family, she considered him entitled to the same watchful care as if he were in reality an invalid son. The ice over an hereditary Quaker nature is but a thin crust, if one knows how to break it; and in Richard Hilton's case, it was already broken before his arrival. His only embarrassment, in fact, arose from the difficulty which he naturally experienced in adapting himself to the speech and address of the Mitchenor family. The greetings of old Eli, grave, yet kindly, of Abigail, quaintly familiar and tender, of Moses, cordial and slightly condescending, and finally of Asenath, simple and natural to a degree which impressed him like a new revelation in woman, at once indicated to him his position among them. His city manners, he felt, instinctively, must be unlearned, or at least laid aside for a time. Yet it was not easy for him to assume, at such short notice, those of his hosts. Happening to address Asenath as “Miss Mitchenor,” Eli turned to him with a rebuking face.
“We do not use compliments, Richard,” said he; “my daughter's name is Asenath.
“I beg pardon. I will try to accustom myself to your ways, since you have been so kind as to take me for a while,” apologized Richard Hilton.
“Thee's under no obligation to us,” said Friend Mitchenor, in his strict sense of justice; “thee pays for what thee gets.”