“’Tis no steeper than it was last week, or will be next,” laughed Sally in a sweet tremor of bashful joy; for Alick was her hero, and hitherto had only treated her as one of the children. “But if you like, you may hand me the dish after I am down.”
“Yes, indeed. It looks like the head of John Baptist on a charger, as ’tis seen in the Elder’s big Bible.”
“And so it does,” replied the girl, glancing with a new interest at the great ball of butter in the middle of the pewter platter, which Alexander held aloft in mimicry of the picture both had seen as children.
Then presently, the butter deposited, the trap door closed, and the noggin of milk presented and quaffed, the two came through the long passage dividing the dairy from the kitchen, and were met by the mistress of the house, our Priscilla, a little older, but still as charming as when we first knew her, and showing among her daughters like the rose among its buds, the glorious fulfillment of a gracious promise.
“Good-morrow to you, Alick. Go into the sitting-room, you and Betty,—or no; Sally, you’ve been busy while Betty was on her travels, you go and make Alick miserable till dinner’s dished”—
“Nay, dame, I’m beholden to you, but I must go”—
“Surely you must go, but not without your dinner, my lad. ’Tis Saturday and salt-fish dinner, you know, and I’ll warrant me your mother’s ’ll be no better than I shall give you.”
“My mother’d be the first to say she’s no match for Mistress Alden in delicate cookery.”
“There, there, go say your pretty things to the girls, Sally or Betty, it matters not which, but don’t whet your wit on an old woman like me. Be off with you!”
Laughing and well pleased that fortune so favored his half-formed wishes, Alick followed Sally through the sitting-room to the front door, standing wide open to the summer; and then, sitting on the threshold, their feet upon the great natural doorstone which their children’s and their children’s children’s feet should press, the man and the maid entered into that fairyland we all pass through once in our lives.