CHAPTER XXIV.
"And what are words? How little these the silence of the soul oppress!
Mere froth,—the foam and flower of seas whose hungering waters heave and press Against the planets and the sides of night,—mute, yearning, mystic tides!"
Bulwer.
"I am coming home next month," wrote Roy, "with my wife—the very dearest, sweetest, most lovable and beautiful girl in the whole world. We have decided not to wait, but to be married at once—as soon as she can get ready, and I a bit stronger—and go home for our bridal trip. The winter at home with you will finish up my recovery (and if anything on earth could facilitate it, Emma's nursing and care and love will,) and then if the war is not over, of course I'll go back if I am needed—enlist again. My time is out now; but I hope and believe that the war will be over, or, at least, on its last legs by that time, and then I can begin business at once. My own idea is to take the stock-farm, if father is willing, instead of leaving it to those Martins who don't know the first thing about stock-breeding, and go in for fine horses and a few fine cows, too. I got hold of some books on those subjects here. Emma's father used to have a fancy that way, and I've read up and talked a lot with him on the subject in these four months. Don't you think we could fix the house out there on the place so it would do very well, indeed, for a couple of young folks who won't care so very much about anything at all but each other?"
Griffith stopped reading the letter to laugh. "Tut, tut, tut! Here's more love in a cottage business for you. Well, well, I am surprised, Katherine! I am——"
"I am not. I've been expecting it all along—only—I did hope—I didn't think it would be quite so soon. Roy is only twen——"
"Well, well,'pon my soul, it looks as if you didn't get out of one kind of a frying-pan in this world until you got into another. I was just building all sorts of castles about the future and—and to tell the mortal truth, Katherine, I never once thought of making a place for a daughter-in-law! Never once! Why——"
There was a long pause. Griffith finished the letter in silence and handed it to his wife. As she read—she began back at the beginning—he gazed straight before him with unseeing eyes and a low hum ran along with unsteady and broken measure. "'How tedious—mmmm—mm—the hours, Mmmmm—no longer mmm mm; Sweet pros—mmm, swee—et mmm mm mm, mmmm, Ha—ave all mm mm mm mm to me.' But we'll have to expand the castle, Katherine—build on an addition for a daughter-in-law," he said as if there had been no break in the conversation, albeit almost half an hour had passed during which each had been wrapped in thought, and the singing—if Griffith's natural state of vocalization may be called by that name—was wholly unnoticed by both.