Immediately after breakfast Brent eluded the old gentleman and went out beyond the gate to watch for Zack. Up and down the cedar bordered avenue he walked, checking off the eternities which passed before the mule ambled into view.
"I wouldn' a-been so long, Marse Brent," Zack began apologizing and fumbling in his pocket for a note, "but Miss Jane jest nachelly taken a hour writin' dis!"
Now he was as impatient to be away from Zack as he had been for Zack to come. A few minutes later, down in the woodland pasture under a spreading beech, he stretched at full length in the bluegrass and reverently gazed at the little envelope. His own note had not called for an answer of great—indeed, of any—importance. (The first one had, and the second!—but the last was, he thought, a model of convention.) However, Zack had said she was a long time writing it;—at least, his eyes could lingeringly dwell over line after line, page after page, traced by her hand!
What did meet his eyes was:
"This is the happiest birthday I have ever known!"
He wondered if she, too, had found note writing difficult!
As the morning wore on he saw the family carriage, with Uncle Zack in his beaver hat, move toward the pike, and he surmised that the Colonel, Nancy and Miss Liz were going in state to pay their respects to Jane. Then he went slowly home. It was very quiet with them away. Someone back near the kitchen was turning an ice cream freezer, which produced a rather unpleasant suggestion of Sunday company, and a long and tiresome feast. He saw the upstairs maid.
"Where's Mister Dale?"
"He's done gone out, sah."
"How was he feeling?"