"If I were sound—"
"And sensible, you'd race me again to the gate of the Clove."
Burnside-in-the-Clove was a bonny place. The "burn," from which the farm took its name almost as much as from the family which had dwelt there for generations, ran through the velvet lawn and was spanned by a rustic bridge where the well kept driveway curved toward the roomy house.
"Oh! it's so lovely here. The many, many windows, each more cheery and inviting than its neighbor; the old-fashioned door, opened almost all the time; the hammocks, the benches, the flowers, the cool, sweet dairy—this is a home. I guess I'll make ours here instead of at Fairacres, after all," laughed Amy, as they paced sedately over the gravel, the better to enjoy the scene, and now that they had arrived, in no such haste for the meeting with their people.
"I like to go slowly now, don't you, Hal? Because that makes the pleasure 'long-drawn out' and all the sweeter. In a minute mother's face will be in the doorway, with father looking over her shoulder. Friend Adam, blessed man, will hobble after, if he is not too lame; and then we shall jump off and the 'man' will take the burros, and we will go in and hug everybody all round, and eat the biggest kind of a supper—living on dry bread and milk two meals a day can give an appetite! And then one of dear old Adam's 'Spirit' talks; and bed and sleep, and breakfast and meeting, and—"
"'Spite House'!"
"No, Hallam, truly not. Our mother couldn't live in such a place. To-morrow a new life will begin on the barren knoll. 'Charity House' she will have it, and wherever our mother goes, softness and kindness and loveliness are sure to follow."
"Yes, that is so," answered the cripple, thoughtfully. "Well, hear me, Amy. I guess I have been about as much of a wet blanket as I could be, but I'm going to try my very hardest to make things easy for father and mother. Just now, as we rode down the valley into all this peace and quiet, I seemed to see myself exactly as I am. Heigho! but look how green the grass is still, late in the year as it is, and how beautiful the vines on the stone walls. The maples are like a golden glory. My father must have been wonderfully soothed by so much loveliness about him, though he's going to feel it all the—"