“And some give thanks, and some blaspheme,
And most forget, but either way,
That and the child’s forgotten dream
Are all the light of all our day.”
“Alick! Sally! Come to dinner!” cried Betty’s blithe voice; but as the young man arose and turned his glowing face toward her, she stared at it for a moment in astonishment, and then turned sharply away to hide the smile that would in her own despite curl her lips.
“They’re stronger than we women in some ways, but they’re wondrously weak in others,” was the thought beneath that smile.
In the great airy kitchen, where no fire was made in the warm weather, a table was spread large enough to accommodate, besides the heads of the family, their eight children, and the two men and a woman who lived in the house really as “help,” and not servants.
A fourteenth seat was now placed for the guest between Betty and her brother Joseph, still his mother’s true lover and helper, but Alick noted with pleasure that Sally sat opposite, and gave him the opportunity to study her face, which he seemed never to have seen before.
The long grace ended, and the clatter of chairs and feet upon the bare floor a little subsided, John Alden, viewing with satisfaction the great codfish lying at full length upon the platter yet longer than itself, said,—