“It would be a dull wit that would go roving from Aunt Molly,” said Champe, affectionately; “but there aren't many of her kind in the world.”
“I never found but one like her,” admitted the Major, “and I've seen a good deal in my day, sir.”
The old lady listened with a smile, though she spoke in a severe voice. “You mustn't let them teach you how to flatter, Mr. Morson,” she said warningly, as she filled the Major's second cup of coffee—“Cupid, Mr. Morson will have a partridge.”
“The man who sits at your table will never question your supremacy, dear madam,” returned Jack Morson, as he helped himself to a bird. “There is little merit in devotion to such bounty.”
“Shall I kick him, grandma?” demanded Dan. “He means that we love you because you feed us, the sly scamp.”
Mrs. Lightfoot shook her head reprovingly. “Oh, I understand you, Mr. Morson,” she said amiably, “and a compliment to my housekeeping never goes amiss. If a woman has any talent, it will come out upon her table.”
“You're right, Molly, you're right,” agreed the Major, heartily. “I've always held that there was nothing in a man who couldn't make a speech or in a woman who couldn't set a table.”
Dan stirred restlessly in his chair, and at the first movement of Mrs. Lightfoot he rose and went out into the hall. An hour later he ordered Prince Rupert and started joyously to Uplands.
As he rode through the frosted air he pictured to himself a dozen different ways in which it was possible that he might meet Virginia. Would she be upon the portico or in the parlour? Was she still in pink or would she wear the red gown of yesterday? When she gave him her hand would she smile as she had smiled last night? or would she stand demurely grave with down dropped lashes?
The truth was that she did none of the things he had half expected of her. She was sitting before a log fire, surrounded by a group of Harrisons and Powells, who had been prevailed upon to spend the night, and when he entered she gave him a sleepy little nod from the corner of a rosewood sofa. As she lay back in the firelight she was like a drowsy kitten that had just awakened from a nap. Though less radiant, her beauty was more appealing, and as she stared at him with her large eyes blinking, he wanted to stoop down and rock her off to sleep. He regarded her calmly this morning, for, with all his tenderness, she did not fire his brain, and the glory of the vision had passed away. Half angrily he asked himself if he were in love with a pink dress and nothing more?