"Indeed, Miss Walton, I cannot," he replied.
"Please do," she urged, "as a favor to me. I made it myself; and I can't eat any breakfast till I have seen you take this."
He at once complied, though with a wry face.
"There," said she, with a touch of playfulness, "I have seldom received a stronger compliment. After this compliance I think I could venture to ask anything of you."
"The tea is like myself," he answered. "You brought to it skilled hands and pure spring water, and yet, from the nature of the thing itself, it was a villanous compound. Please don't ask me to take any more. Perhaps you have heard an old saying, 'Like dislikes like.'"
She determined that he should not yield to this morbid despondency, but had too much tact to argue with him; therefore she said, kindly, "We never did agree very well, Mr. Gregory, and don't now. But before many hours I hope I can give you a cup of tea and something with it more to your taste. I must admit that I am ready even for this dreadful breakfast, that threatens to destroy my powers of digestion in one fatal hour. You see what a poor subject I am for romance;" and she smilingly turned away to a meal that gave her a glimpse of how the "other half of the world lives."
Before she had finished, the sound of wheels and horses' hoofs coming rapidly up the glen brought her to the door, and with joy she recognized a near neighbor of her father's, a sturdy, kind-hearted farmer, who had joined in the search for the missing ones the moment he learned, in the dawn of that morning, that they had not returned.
He gave a glad shout as he saw Annie's form in the doorway, and to her his broad, honest face was like that of an angel. All are beautiful to those they help.
"Your father is in a dreadful state, Miss Annie," said Farmer Jones; "but I told him if he would only stay at home and wait, I, and a few other neighbors, would soon find you. He was up at the foot of the mountain ever since twelve o'clock last night. Then he came home to see if you hadn't returned some other way. I'm usually out as soon as it's light, so I hailed him as he passed and asked what on earth he was up for at that time of day. He told me his trouble, so I hitched up my light wagon and got to your house as soon as he did. When he found you hadn't come yet, he was for starting right for the mountains, but I saw he wasn't fit, so I says, 'Mr. Walton, you'll just miss 'em. They've taken a wrong road, or the wagon has broken down, but they'll be home before ten o'clock. Now send Jeff up the road you expected them on. I'll send Mr. Harris, who lives just beyond me, out on the road they took first. My horse is fast, and I'll go round up this valley, and in this way we'll soon scour every road;' and so with much coaxing I got him to promise to stay till I returned. So jump in quick, and I'll have you home in little over an hour."
"But we can't leave Mr. Gregory here. Let him go first. He is ill, and needs attention immediately."