"My dear child," he cried, looking up, and a smile of pleasure lighted up the kind face under his white hair, "I knew that you would come to-day."
He bowed to the stranger, and, after a few words of greeting, turned again to Ilse.
"Only think what a misfortune--the storm has broken our peach tree, the espalier is torn up and the branches are shattered; the damage is irreparable."
He bent over the disabled tree, which he had just bound up with a bandage of tree-gum and matting.
"It is the only peach tree here," he said, lamentingly, to the Professor; "they have none on the whole estate, nor any in the town. But I must not worry you with my little troubles," he continued, more cheerfully; "I pray you come with me into the house."
Ilse entered the side door of an extension, near the house proper. "How is Flavia?" she inquired of the maid, who stood at the threshold, anticipating the visit.
"Doing very well," answered Susannah, "and the little one also."
"It is the dun cow and her young calf," explained the Pastor to the Professor, as Ilse returned into the narrow courtyard with the maid. "I do not like people to call animals by Christian names, so I have recourse to our Latin vocabulary."
Ilse returned. "It is time that the calf should be taken away; it is a wasteful feeder."
"That is what I said too," interposed Susannah, "but his Reverence the Pastor will not consent."