And it was with a deep resolution to be careful, and watch all his words, that he descended the stairs. He had taken out of his valise two front pages of a Sunday newspaper, containing “Jeff Brigg’s Love Story,” which he had saved a while before for Isabel, and he gave them now to her.
“Here is something I cut out for you, Isabel; it is a very pretty story, and I know you will like it.”
“Oh, how sweet of you! How well you know just what will please me most of all! And you shall read it to me! The other stories you have sent me were only moderately nice, because I had to read them by myself, but this—oh! this will be enchanting!”
She arranged an easy chair—a low, capacious chair with light blue the dominant color in its covering—close beside the window in the parlor which overlooked the poplars, and seated herself in it. Seth brought a hassock for her feet, and then put his own chair along side, where he could see her, and still get a good light on the print. It was not easy for him to begin the reading, so great was the fascination of looking at his companion. The sunlight flared upon the white curtains above her, and its reflections glowed back again from her crown of golden braids, luminous against the azure of the chair, and tipped with soft radiance her rounded profile, in cameo-relief against the deep olive of the poplars. Isabel was an artist.
He made a beginning at last, and read until the democrat-wagon drove up in the yard, with its load of church-goers. She made a little mouth at the interruption.
“I suppose Sabrina will come in now, and dinner will be ready soon. But afterwards we can be quiet again, for she always reads the Bible in her own room Sunday afternoons.”
All through the cold dinner, despite the necessity of answering Aunt Sabrina’s and Milton’s remarks, Seth found his mental vision fixed on that beautiful profile against the leafy background; especially sweet was the portrait when the eyes were closed, and the lovely fullness above the lids, as in the face of a Madonna, was revealed in the wavering light.
The story was not to be finished that afternoon, for Elhanan Pratt and his daughter dropped in almost before the meal was finished, and a little later Annie Fairchild came. There was not even much consolation in the pretty grimaces expressive of discontent which Isabel from time to time, when the visitors were not looking, confided to Seth. It was a very dull afternoon.
The venerable Mr. Pratt, a weazen, verbose little “gentleman-farmer,” who wore a huge black satin stock over his high flaring collar opening behind, and remained clean-shaven, in pious memory of Henry Clay and the coon campaign, sat on the edge of his chair and droned commonplaces by the hour. He evidently had an axe to grind by his visit, and he was much disappointed by Albert’s absence. But if he could not see “the coming Congressman,” as he called him once or twice, and sound that new political magnate as to his own renomination for the Assembly, he could at least enjoy the monopoly of a long conversation with the Editor of the Tecumseh Chronicle, and impress that young man with the breadth and value of his views. So Seth was forced to spend three dreary hours, answering as briefly as might be, listening wearily, and stealing stray glances at the three young women, who made a brighter group on the other side of the parlor stove. Once or twice he tried tentatively to engraft himself upon their conversation, and choke old Elhanan off, but the solemn little bore relentlessly brought him back to the dry bones of politics. Thus it happened that he had barely had an opportunity of exchanging a word with his cousin Annie, when she stood up and said, “I must be going.”
He walked over to her now, and put his hand in a brotherly way on her shoulder, as he helped her on with her cloak.