He kissed his daughters at the breakfast table. He chatted with them, and though he said nothing about it, even Lily knew that he had resolved to reform.
After breakfast Helen left him, with Lily sitting on her father's lap, her face bright with the sunshine of it:
“If papa would always be like this”—and she patted his cheek.
Conway started. The very intonation of her voice, her gesture, was of the long dead mother.
Tears came to his eyes. He kissed her: “Never again, little daughter, will I take another drop.”
She looked at him seriously: “Say with God's help—” she said simply. “Mammy Maria said it won't count unless you say that.”
Conway smiled. “I will do it my own self.”
But Lily only shook her head in a motherly, scolding way.
“With God's help, then,” he said.
Never was an Autumn morning more beautiful to Helen as she walked across the fields to the mill. She had learned a nearer way, one which lay across hill and field. The path ran through farms, chiefly The Gaffs, and cut across the hills and meadow land. Through little dells, amid fragrant groves of sweet gum and maples, their beautiful many-colored leaves now scattered in rich profusion around. Then down little hollows where the brooks sputtered and frothed and foamed along, the sun all the time darting in and out, as the waters ran first in sunshine and then in shadow. And above, the winds were so still, that the jumping of the squirrel in the hickories made the only noise among the leaves which still clung to the boughs.