"You'll only find out by degrees all you've undertaken, young man. You've got to marry Aunt Jannet Harvey as well."
"Polygamy is still practised out there," he said heartily. "As a matter of policy we have to countenance it at times; but we set our faces against it, because it does not work well. If this means that Mrs. Harvey has consented to accompany us——"
"Consented? She proposed it, or rather took it for granted, and won't hear a word against it."
"Then my heart is lightened of one of its cares, and I am truly grateful to Aunt Jannet"—and Aunt Jannet was his from that moment. "God surely put the thought into your kind heart," he said, as he wrung the capable old hand warmly. "You will be more to Jean out there than words can tell. I thank you with all my heart."
"I knew it," said Aunt Jannet, with emphasis. "I wanted to ask you, Mr. Blair——"
"Kenneth, surely, now, Aunt Jannet!"
"Surely!—Kenneth—what the ladies wear out there."
"Well, the native ladies don't wear much, and the ladies of the missions wear much what you would here, if you cared only for use and comfort, and nothing for fashion. They always look very neat and clean"—at which Jean smiled reminiscently.
"I see," said Aunt Jannet. "Jean and I will lay our heads together. I think we can live up to that standard, at all events."
He had a cup of tea with them, and then ran along to the hotel to bring old Mr. and Mrs. MacTavish over to dinner. And after dinner they sat and talked and talked, and he laid some of his ideas and plans before them, and had only just begun when it was time for the old people to go home to bed. For his plans and ideas were blossoming in the golden sunshine like an orchard kept back by a late spring, and flung suddenly into the quickening warmth of coming summer.