"We are always at home to our old and valued friends," replied Mrs. Dunmore. "I hope our long separation will not make us strangers to each other."
"Miss Jennie reminds me that a long interval has come between us," said the clergyman, glancing at the graceful and womanly figure before him; "I have been accustomed to think of her as the child of my pleasant rambles, so that I am scarcely prepared to meet her in another form."
Jennie had received him with that timid cordiality so common to early womanhood, a kind of shrinking from the advances of a new and not wholly defined stage of being, and, as he alluded to the days of her childhood and the hours spent together in his hill-girt home, a slight blush tinged her face, and she said, "the long interval has changed you too, Mr. Colbert, so that there needed early memories to aid me in recognizing you."
"Time has dealt very differently with us," replied her friend, as the mirror opposite enabled him to contrast his sunken and pallid features with the round and healthful face of the lovely girl. "There are many things, however, that encourage me in the hope that we are none the less friends than formerly, and that we still have the one great sympathy in common;" added he, recalling her devout manner in church the day before.
"Are you not well, Mr. Colbert," asked Mrs. Dunmore; "or do you trespass upon the hours necessary to your repose and recreation that you are so much thinner and paler than you used to be? I fear I must usurp your prerogative and turn preacher if you are really destroying your health by too great devotion to your duties."
"I have been quite a sufferer for the last few years, my dear madam," returned the minister; "but not from the cause you assign."
"Perhaps you need change," said the widow; "it is not well to confine one's self too constantly to one locality."
"I feel confident it is so," said Mr. Colbert, "since even so short a journey revives me materially; but how comes it," he asked, "that you are here, and apparently settled?"
"Jennie must explain that to you," replied Mrs. Dunmore, "as it was through her that our present arrangements were made."
"Ah! do you find a rural life so much more congenial than your city home that you have adopted it altogether?" said Mr. Colbert, addressing Jennie.