One week after the northern visit Colonel Hamilton received very decided orders from headquarters to return immediately to his regiment. "Lee must be intercepted."
"You must do it all alone, Lillian," was the quick remark when the telegram was read. "Howe & Brother will furnish all in the upholstery line that will be desired, and be sure that our home is made fitting the reception of our daughter."
How full the succeeding days were to the hopeful wife and mother! "She will be here at the first tinging of the maple trees." This she had said to her aunt. "Only a little more than two months in which to make all ready."
"Such a dainty bit of precious girlhood must not be allowed to step on the common ingrain that covers your old uncle's floors, I take it." This was a little improvised indignation as the good old uncle listened to the plannings and recountings of the luxuries that were to surround her in the home to be prepared. "But the fisherman's cot shouldn't be forgotten, Lillian, and so sometimes you will let her come to us?"
"What a wicked, naughty uncle you are!" Lillian exclaimed, while she smothered all further ebullitions of assumed anger by placing a little white hand over his mouth. "There! Now to punish you for those words I shall be at the store at five for you to go with me and look over the premises!"
"Want to blacken my fingers with the guilt of spoiling her do you? Well, well! A full half hour lost in palavering; good-bye," and the jovial uncle went out from his home leaving it full of sunshine.
October dawned bright and beautiful. The hazy mist that brooded over the city was tinted with hues of purple and gold as they became tangled with the many colored leaves that fell through the cool shadows in the public squares, and in a week Lily-Pearl Hamilton would arrive! One cloud only was shadowing the path of Mrs. Hamilton, and that the absence and dangers of him to whom her heart had clung through all the gloomy days; but in a few months his "three years" would close and then—how happy they would all be!
"If Pearl can succeed in getting Old Auntie and Lizzy safely here, as he assured me he could do," she had said, "my cup will be full to overflowing!"
"How will your mother bear all this?" queried Mrs. Cheevers.
"With no serious result I imagine. The doctor told me the other day that she was not susceptible of a very severe shock, her brain having become so inactive that no injury would probably come to it through excitement."