Chapter Eleven.
A Slip on a Stone.
The morning broke, bright and clear, one of those rare winter mornings without a cloud in the blue, and the sun making additional patterns through the frost facets on the window pane. And the said sun had not very long since risen.
Mervyn looked out of the window; the house faced due east and caught the first glory of the morning sun—when there was any to catch, and to-day there was. The frosted pines glistened and gleamed with it, so too did the earth, with its newly laid coating of crystals. But in the midst of this setting was a picture.
Melian was coming down the path. A large hooded cloak was wrapped round her, but she had nothing on her head, and the glory of her golden hair shone like fire in the new born, clear rays. The kitten, a woolly ball of black fluffiness, was squatted upon her shoulder, and she was singing to herself in a full, clear voice. He noted her straight carriage, and the swing of her young, joyous, elastic gait. A picture indeed! And this bright, beautiful, joyous child, was going to belong to him henceforward—to him, all alone. No one else in the wide world had the shadow of a claim upon her. She had come to him out of sordid surrounding of depression and want—yes, it would soon have come to that, judging from the account she had given of herself. Well, she had fallen upon the right place, and at the right time.
He dressed quickly. He heard her enter the house, and old Judy’s harsh croaky tones mingling with the clear melodious ones. Then a silvery rippling laugh, then another. He remembered old Judy could be funny at times in her dry, cautious old rustic way. John Seward Mervyn felt the times had indeed changed for him. He felt years and years younger, under the bright spell of this youthful influence in the gloomy and shunned old house.
“Well dear!” he cried gaily, coming into the room. “You don’t look much of the ‘flu’ patient slowly convalescing. What sort of an ungodly early time did you get up?”
“Oh Uncle Seward, I’ve had such fun. I’ve been out all up the pond, and this little poogie had a romp all over the ice. Then it rushed up a tree after a squirrel, and they sat snarling at each other at the end of a thin bough, and the squirrel jumped to another tree, but the poogie wasn’t taking any. Were you, pooge-pooge?” And she squeezed the little woolly ball into her face and neck.