Miss Adah needed but little assistance to alight, but she took my hand in hers, which she had ungloved as she approached her home. It was her mother's soft, plump hand, but unmarked, as yet, by years of toil. I forgot we were such entire strangers, and under the impulse of my fancy clasped it a trifle warmly, at which she gave me a look of slight surprise, thus suggesting that there was no occasion for the act.
"You are mistaken," I mentally responded; "there is more occasion than you imagine; more than I may dare to tell you for a long time to come."
A lady who had been sitting on the piazza disappeared within the house, and Adah followed her.
"Now, mother," said Mr. Yocomb, "since thee did so little for friend Morton's spiritual man, see what thee can do for the temporal. I'll take the high seat this time, and can tell thee beforehand that there'll be no silent meeting."
"Father may seem to thee a little irreverent, but he doesn't mean to be. It's his way," said his wife, with a smile. "If thee'll come with me I'll show thee to a room where thee can rest and prepare for dinner."
I followed her through a wide hall to a stairway that changed its mind when half-way up and turned in an opposite direction. "It suggests the freedom and unconventionality of this home," I thought, yielding to my mood to idealize everything.
"This is thy room so long as thee'll be pleased to stay with us," she said, with a genial smile, and her ample form vanished from the doorway.
I was glad to be alone. The shining tide of events was bearing me almost too swiftly. "Can this be even the beginning of true love, since it runs so smoothly?" I queried. And yet it had all come about so simply and naturally, and for everything there was such adequate cause and rational explanation, that I assured myself that I had reason for self-congratulation rather than wonder.
Having seen such a maiden, it would be strange indeed if I had not been struck by her beauty. With an hour on my hands, and thoughts that called no one master, it would have been stranger still if I had not been beguiled into a dream which, in my need, promised so much that I was now bent on its fulfilment. Kind Mr. and Mrs. Yocomb had but carried out the teachings of their faith, and thus I was within the home of one who, developing under the influences of such a mother and such surroundings, would have the power beyond most other women of creating another home. I naturally thought that here, in this lovely and sheltered spot, and under just the conditions that existed, might be perfected the simple, natural flower of womanhood that the necessities of my life and character required.
I was too eager to prove my theories, and too strongly under the presentiment that my hour of destiny had come, to rest, and so gladly welcomed the tinkle of the dinner-bell.