Almost at home, Standish, looking with anxious love into the lily face at his shoulder, said,—
“Poppet, you’re not over-sorry, are you? Why don’t you speak to me?”
“You bade me not speak until you spoke to me, father dear. Nay, but I am sorry, heartily sorry, you should have chided Ras so hardly. Poor lad! He was fit to cry when we left him.”
“But you do not really care for him, dear child? You are not set upon becoming his—his wife?”
“Nay, father, I do not care to be any man’s wife. I would far fainer stay at home with you and mother, but Ras seemed so keen upon the matter and declared I loved him not, that to make him content I said yes; for indeed I do love him, father, more than I love any man after you and the boys.”
“Ha, ha! My little lass, there’ll come a day when the boys, and haply your poor old dad as well, will fly down the wind like thistledown before the love that still lieth sound asleep in my maid’s pure heart.”
“Nay, father, not asleep, but too dear and too holy to be spoken of,” murmured Lora, a soft flush upon her cheek, a tender light in her eyes as she raised them to her father’s face.
“What! what!” stammered he, half affrighted lest the girl had lost her senses. “You love some one already!”
“Oh, father, so much, so dearly! ’Tis for that I love to go and sit all alone there upon the brow of the hill, where I may see the beauty He has made and gaze away and away into the heavens where He lives. Sure the hills of Judah were not so lovely as this place, and who can tell but some day He may descend and stand visibly upon them”—