“We shall not forget how much we are obliged to you, Mr. Lawton,” said Kate, pleasantly, offering him her hand. “Be sure that you tell your daughter, too, how grateful we all are.”
Ben took the delicate hand thus amazingly extended to him, and shook it with formal awkwardness.
“I didn’t seem to do much,” he said, deprecatingly, “and perhaps I wouldn’t have amounted to much, neether, if it had a-come to fightin’ and gougin’ and wras’lin’ round generally. But you can bet your boots, ma’am, that I’d a-done what I could!”
With this chivalrous assurance Ben withdrew, and marched down the steps with a carriage more nearly erect than Thessaly had ever seen him assume before.
The heavy front door swung to, and Reuben realized, with a new rush of charmed emotion, that heaven had opened for him once more.
A servant came and whispered something to Miss Kate. The latter nodded, and then turned to Reuben with a smile full of light and softness.
“If you will give me your arm,” she said, in a delicious murmur, “we will go into the dining-room. My mother and sister are waiting for us there. We are not supper-people as a rule, but it seemed right to have one to-night.”