I expressed the pleasure his manner conveyed to me.
"My little girl will like this place, I think," he said.
The singular sweetness of his smile charmed me. After a moment he took a little oval miniature case from his breast and handed it to me. It contained a sweet, pure, earnest face—a sparkle in the modest eyes, too, that told of exuberant life.
"That is what I call lovable," I exclaimed, in enthusiasm.
My praise seemed to touch him to the quick.
"I think so, too," he answered, quietly, putting the picture back in its hiding-place, with a moment's happy abstraction.
We drove fleetly up to the door. A little knot of men gathered about the horses as usual. I went up to my room with a new item for thought.
The next day Colonel Staniels took the boat for New York. In three days he was back with his wife.
Brides are not generally to my taste, they are usually too suggestive of clothes, and plume themselves to a fatiguing extent. They are too demonstrative and important, too publicly tender, and too generally oppressive. But I liked Mrs. Staniels the moment I heard her glad laugh. It was a laugh, and her face was like a sunbeam.
She was not overdressed or burdened with the consciousness of her position; she did not caress her husband in public, or betray any unusual excitement.