“Reuben will most likely feel cut up to have such people living in his old house,” Mrs. Miller opined sadly.
“O ma, they can’t help it, and they aren’t that sort themselves at all!” cried Anna.
“And my patience, Jenny, Reuben would be the last one in the world to object to anybody because they was down; the quickest way to reach Reuben’s heart is to be in trouble,” declared Seth Miller loyally. “He started out as a little shaver by rescuing a poor, forlorn tramp cat, and he’s been like a shepherd seeking for lost sheep ever since. By the by, Anna, did I ever tell you that story—how Reuben clumb the highest tree in the county and like as not in the state?”
“You certainly did, pa, the very day after I got back, and many’s the time you have offered to tell it to me again,” retorted the girl. “Miss Penny told me the same story the second time she laid eyes on me and this very week she refreshed my memory with all the fine points of it. But all the same, it’s a first rate yarn, and Reuben’s a brick.”
“That was the beginning of his going to Miss Penny’s,” Seth Miller went on as if he could not leave the fascinating subject. Then suddenly he opened his eyes wide to see Mr. Langley drive up to the gate.
As Mr. Langley stepped on the porch, Anna was seized with a sudden and almost unaccountable sense of guilt. She felt as if she must make her escape. But there was no stairway except that in the front passage, and here was her mother beamingly ushering the minister in upon her. But as she glanced up—even indeed, as she heard his step, the girl was reassured. Somehow, it seemed as if Mr. Langley had recaptured his springiness. He looked his old young self again, and as he took her hand he smiled in a way that made her feel as if she had had a benediction all to herself.
“O Anna, my dear child, Mrs. Langley wishes very much to see you,” he said eagerly and with a certain largeness that would have been amusing if it hadn’t been pathetic. For it seemed to indicate that he was the bearer of a mandate from royalty.
“She expected you yesterday, it seems, and to-day she was so disappointed to get a note instead of a call that I volunteered to come up at once and fetch you.”
Thus far no one outside the parsonage had known of that audacious visit of Anna’s. Seth Miller’s face wore an expression half-jaunty, half proud. No man had such extraordinary daughters as he, and sometimes it seemed as if Anna were quite as remarkable as Rusty. But Mrs. Miller looked frightened.
Mr. Langley turned to her with his charming smile.