CHAPTER X
THE WONDERFUL DAY
Though I live to be a hundred and fifty years old, which heaven forbid, I shall never forget the events which followed upon the historic publication of the Poems of Hempfield. I wonder if you have ever awakened in the morning with a curious deep sense of having some peculiar reason for being happy? You lie half awake for a moment wondering what it can all be about, and then it comes suddenly and vividly alive for you. It was so with me on that morning, and I thought of the adventures of the printing-office, and of Anthy and Nort and Fergus and the old Captain.
"Surely," I said to myself, "no one ever had such friends as I have!"
I thought what an amusing world this was, anyway, how full of captivating people. And I whistled all the way down the stairs, clean forgetting that this was contrary to one of Harriet's most stringent rules; and when I went out it seemed to me that the countryside never looked more beautiful at dawn than it did on that morning.
At Barton's Crossing on my way to town I could see the silvery spire of the Congregational Church, and at the hill beyond the bridge all Hempfield lay before me, half hidden in trees, with friendly puffs of breakfast smoke rising from many chimneys; and when I reached the gate of the printing-office the sun was just looking around the corner, and there in the doorway, as fresh and confident as you please, stood that rascal of a Norton Carr, whistling a little tune and looking out with a cocky eye upon the world of Hempfield.
"Hello, David!" he called out when he saw me.
"Hello, Nort!" I responded; "it's a wonderful morning."