Dawn of the Morning

by Grace Livingston Hill

"Oh!" There was immense relief in Dawn's exclamation, and the color came back to her cheeks, which had grown pale with apprehension when she asked the question.

"Then he will not come on this train at all?" she asked, and a light broke into her eyes.

"You poor child!" said he gently. "Were you afraid of that?" He laid his hand over hers comfortingly.

"I have been so tired and so frightened," murmured Dawn; and now she had to let the tears come rolling down her cheeks, though she tried hard enough to keep them back. But somehow she felt he would understand it all, and she lay back and let him wipe them away with his large, cool handkerchief that smelled of rose-leaves; and between the tears he laid a kiss now and then that seemed like healing ointment to her sore heart, so she no more tried to contend with her conscience as to what was right for married women to do in such circumstances. She only knew she had found some one who acted toward her as she remembered her dear mother doing. The kisses seemed such as an angel's might be, if an angel stooped to kiss. So she ceased trying to understand, and just took the comfort of it. Perhaps it had been sent to her to help her in her time of need. Remember, she was very young, and had been facing a great terror.

They presently trundled out of the woods into a little village, and the comforting had to cease. Dawn sat up with rosy cheeks and bright eyes, the tears all gone, and looked about her with interest. They talked in low tones of the people they saw come and go on the platform, and laughed at a couple of geese who were squawking and gabbling at the train for coming so close to their nice mud-puddle by the track, putting in a natural protest against the march of civilization.

But an old lady with many bandboxes and a carpet-bag was put into their coach just before the train started on its way again, and there could be no more quiet confidences. Dawn had thought she would presently ask a few more questions about her husband, and why he had found it necessary to take another train. Most of all, she wanted to know when and where she was to meet him. But now there was no more opportunity to ask questions.

At Albany, they waited for the stage-coach, and walked about exploring the city, more absorbed in their own pleasant converse than in sight-seeing, however.

"Do you know, they have never told me your name. I heard it first in the ceremony this morning," said Charles, with a smile. "It is strange, isn't it? But we have had so little time, and before that I was away, and they always wrote of you as 'Miss Van Rensselaer.' I never asked your name because I liked to think of you as I saw you first, all spring blossoms, like some spirit of the air, and I thought a name might destroy the vision."

The pink came softly into the girl's cheek at his earnest words, and it filled her heart with a glow of pleasure like to nothing she had ever felt before.

"They wouldn't have told you my real name if you had asked," said she, showing her dimples in a smile answering to his. "I was christened Jemima, but my mother, my own dear mother, who died a good many years ago, told me my name was Dawn, and she always called me that. She wouldn't consent to my being named Jemima until she found out that the meaning of it was 'Dawn of the Morning,' and she always called me that. I always made everybody at school call me so too. They did not know the other name at school. I love the name because my mother loved it, and said it meant something sweet and dear to her."