It is not to be supposed that Eunice and Henry had ever been sweethearts. That is altogether too rude a suggestion. What does a girl of thirteen think of sweethearts? A lad of sixteen? They pick up the conventional phrase, with its suggestion of friendship more intimate than everyday acquaintance, from their elders; that is all. There may possibly be a liking for each other, a liking more than for any other playmates. That is rare. The most that could be guessed about Eunice and Henry before his leaving home was that he had been more inclined to talk with her than with any other girls who came to the house, and as he, in his cubhood, had a sniff of contempt for most girls, that counted for very little. Perhaps, on second thoughts, it might be held to count for a good deal.
When Henry had been home two summers ago, Eunice was away on one of her rare visits to an aunt in Tewksbury—in a sense, at the world's end. So Henry had rarely seen her since that peep she took at him long ago in Memoryland. He had heard of her frequently, we will suppose, in the letters from his sister Dora, and she of him from her chum.
Meanwhile, an important event had happened in her life. Old Edgar Carne, Eunice's grandfather, had died a year ago, and left his orphan grand-daughter at eighteen with the tiniest little fortune, equal to probably twenty pounds a year. For a time it seemed likely that she would leave the village and go to reside with her aunt at Tewksbury, as she had now no blood relations in Hampton Bagot, though many warm-hearted friends. Simple in her tastes, educated only to the extent of a village curriculum, which did not breed ambition, fond of domestic duties and the light work of a garden, Eunice had no clear-cut path ahead, and would have preferred to stay on among the people who had been planted around her by the hand of friendship.
It so fell out that Fate pinned her to Hampton yet awhile. The housekeeper of the Rev. Godfrey Needham had left, and it was suggested to him by Mr. Charles that Eunice and a young serving-maid would do wonders in brightening up the vicarage, where an elderly housekeeper had only fostered frowsiness. Besides, the vicar had recently to the amazement of his parishioners, taken a little lass of nine to live with him, the orphan child of a relation of his long-dead wife. Eunice could thus be of double service to him in mothering the little one, and her sympathy could be relied upon, since she herself had been robbed of a mother's love so early. It was even whispered that the coming of little Marjorie had something to do with the old housekeeper giving notice to leave; she was "no hand wi' childer," as she herself confessed.
Mr. Needham fell in with Edward John's proposal; Eunice was delighted; and a year had testified to its wisdom. The vicarage had never been so bright in the memory of the oldest inhabitant, the vicar himself had come under the transforming hand of Eunice, and now, within hail of seventy, he was a sprucer figure than he had been since the days of his brief married happiness—forty years before. His collars were always spotless, his white ties—white. His trousers reached to his shoes at last. Perhaps his step had lost its springiness, his coat its breezy freedom; but he had gained in dignity what was lost in quaintness.
As for Eunice herself, this one short year had carried her well into womanhood, and though only nineteen she was the counsellor of many who were older. There is a wonderful reserve of domestic gold in every young woman whose bank is run upon. At an age when a young man is watching his moustache's progress, many a young woman is grappling heroically, obscurely, with the essential things of life. Yet Eunice was doing no more than thousands of womenkind had done.
But her position as housekeeper at the vicarage, as teacher in the Sunday School, conferred certain advantages, and brought her more prominently into the life of the little village. From being "Old Carne's little girl," she had been translated into "Miss Lyndon at the vicarage." Her daily pursuits, the refining influence of her duties, quickly developed and ripened her own excellent qualities of heart and mind, and in twelve fleeting months she stood forth a woman; discreet of tongue, yet bright with happiness, resourceful, heart-free.
Henry noted, with a thrilling interest he could scarce account for, these changes in his little friend of long ago, when she came under his eyes again at church on the Sunday following his arrival.
"How do you do, Miss Lyndon?" and "How are you, Mr. Charles? It seems a lifetime since you went away," did not suggest the sputtering fires of kindling passion.
"Yes, it takes an effort of mind sometimes to recall my Hampton days." One was almost suspicious of affectation.