The guide brought fish, freshly caught that morning before daybreak, and enough of game to feast even that farm crowd of “hands;” and having tarried long enough to deliver the packet to Mrs. Hungerford, to assure her that her brother was well and more than happy now; that he and the other “Boys” intended to lengthen their vacation by a few weeks, in fact to “stay just as long as they could;” to add that by no means must Molly ride “off grounds” again, alone, and that Anton was not to be punished for his “prank;” and to partake of Mrs. Grimm’s most excellent food and drink. Then he called the lads, now almost reluctant to leave the pleasant place of peace and plenty, and rode away again, they following and looking back again and again, to wave farewell.
“I never saw so great an improvement in two boys as in those!” said Auntie Lu, standing to watch them disappear toward the forest, with Molly fast in her arms and Dorothy beside her; then laughed at the rather awkward manner in which she had expressed herself, as she saw Miss Greatorex regarding her. But for once that estimable person was not critical of others’ speech or grammar; and murmured with an air of great content:
“So many more weeks of rest and time to write up my travels.”
Mrs. Hungerford sighed, but conquered the slight loneliness that now oppressed her and set to work herself upon a vigorous correspondence and the carrying forward of a matter her brother had outlined for her. Sometimes in writing these letters she asked Dorothy to sit beside her and would frequently look at the girl as if she were studying her features or her manner. At such time Dolly felt a little awkward and perplexed, yet always, in some indefinable manner, as if this scrutiny were for her own good. Then Auntie Lu would laugh and call the girl her “Inspiration,” and write the faster.
Those last weeks on the old Farm were very quiet, uneventful, yet most happy ones; and the two girls passed much of the time in the cool, shadowy library, among the fine literature therein collected. For Molly had no further desire at present for “larks” and began, instead, to find out how much happiness one may find between the covers of a book. Dorothy introduced her to Dickens, and thereafter the merry maid needed no urging to: “Do sit down and read and let me do so!”
One morning in that late summer time, Mrs. Betty Calvert was sitting on a hotel veranda at the Springs. She was looking very handsome and queenly, in her white gown, her piled-up, snow-white hair, and her “air of one who belonged” to an old “aristocracy.” A little table was beside her, heaped with her morning’s mail; for here, even as in her old home at Bellvieu, she surrounded herself with more such reading matter than she could use. But the letters were duly read and re-read, some of them; and at last she dropped one to her lap, and remarked to a gentleman near her:
“Cousin Seth, Lucretia Breckenridge always was a fool!”
“Hard judgment, Cousin Betty. I should have given quite the contrary. I always thought her a very sweet, sensible, lovable woman.”
“Hmm. You see a deal of ‘sweetness’ in this silly old world. But look here. What sensible woman would write a letter of twenty pages when one would do? All to convince me of something I already knew.”