“Cornie, I don’t believe that red lady is anything at all to Mr. Maxwell, do you?”
Cornelia bent and kissed her sister tenderly and whispered back in a voice that had a ring in it:
“No, darling, I know she isn’t!”
Louise falling cosily to sleep while her sister arranged her hair for the night said to herself sleepily:
“I wonder now, how she knows! She didn’t seem so sure yesterday. He must have told her about her out on the porch.”
CHAPTER XXX
Mr. Copley came up the hill with a spring in his step one evening in late September. Cornelia, glancing out of the window to see whether it was time to put the dishes on the table, caught a glimpse of his tall figure, and noticed how erectly he walked and how his shoulders had squared with the old independent lines she remembered in her childhood. It suddenly came over her that father did not look so tired and worn as he had when she first came home. The lines of worry were not so deeply graven, and his figure did not slump any longer. She was conscious of a glad little thrill of pride in him. Her father was not old. How young, he seemed as he sprinted up the hill, almost as Carey might have done!
Cornelia hurried the dinner to the table, pulled the chain of the dining-room light, for the darkness was beginning to creep into the edges of the room, adjusted a spray of salvia that had fallen over the side of the glass bowl in the centre of the table, and then turned to greet her father. She was reaching her hand to strike the three silver notes of the dinner-gong that hung on the wall by the sideboard; but her hand stopped midway, and her eyes were held by the look of utter joy on the face of her father. For the first time it struck her that her father had once been a young man like Carey. He looked young now, and very happy. The spring was still in his step, a great light was in his eyes, and a smile that seemed to warm and kindle everything in the room. When he spoke just to say the commonplace “Good evening” as usual, there was something almost hilarious in his voice. The children turned to look at him curiously, but he seemed not to be aware of it. He sat down quietly enough, and began to carve the meat.
“Beefsteak!” he said with satisfaction. “That looks good! I’m hungry tonight.”
Cornelia reflected that this was the first time she had heard him speak of being hungry since she came home. She looked curiously at him again, and once more that feeling of wonder at the young look in his eyes touched her. All through the meal, as their parent talked and smiled and told happy little incidents of the day, the children wondered; and finally, when the dessert was almost finished, Carey looked keenly at him and ventured, “Dad, you look as if you’d had a raise in your salary.”