In their absorption they had not heard Charlotte coming up the walk. “What’s the matter?” she exclaimed, seizing her father’s hand. “Is Rhoda sick?”
“You may tell her, father,” Rhoda turned to say, as she and Mrs. Ware disappeared through the door.
“Well, what is it?” Charlotte demanded briskly, as her father hesitated.
“Jeff Delavan wants to marry her.”
“Humph! Is that anything to cry about?” she commented, sitting down on the veranda step. “Where is he? Is he crying too?”
“He’s gone home—he went a little while ago.”
She looked up surprised. “Oh, has he? I thought he’d still be here. But what’s Rhoda crying about? Because he’s gone away so soon? Then why didn’t she keep him? She didn’t refuse him, did she?”
“No, she didn’t give him a definite answer. And since he went away she has remembered that he is a slaveholder. You know how she and I feel about slavery.”
Charlotte sprang to her feet excitedly. “You don’t mean to say she’s going to take that into account! I didn’t think she could be such a goose!” She looked up at him with twinkling eyes. “Father, why didn’t you take me down to Cincinnati with you, so he could have seen me first? Oh, well, I suppose he’ll come back again, won’t he?” And with a toss of her head she ran into the house, stopping at the door to throw back at him an audacious laugh.
He gazed after her, an indulgent smile on his face. Did the look of her and the ring of her saucy laugh awaken some memory of the long ago wherein flitted another dainty, girlish figure so much like her that she sometimes startled him? At any rate, a still warmth took possession of his heart and drove out the slight resentment that just now crept in when his wife took Rhoda away to try to induce her to a course of action so directly opposed to his own convictions.