Ben pressed the little warm hand, watching her mouth quiver with a smile that was half a sigh, as he answered:
“You know I’d trust either of you with my life, but I can’t be too careful.”
“We’ll remember, Sir Knight,” said the mother. “Don’t forget, then, to-morrow—and spend the evening with us. I wish I had one of Marion’s new dresses done. Poor child, she has never had a decent dress in her life before. You know I never look at my pretty baby grown to such a beautiful womanhood without hearing Henry say over and over again—‘Beauty is a sign of the soul—the body is the soul!’”
“Well, I’ve my doubts about your improving her with a fine dress,” he replied thoughtfully. “I don’t believe that more beautifully dressed women ever walked the earth than our girls of the South who came out of the war clad in the pathos of poverty, smiling bravely through the shadows, bearing themselves as queens though they wore the dress of the shepherdess.”
“I’m almost tempted to kiss you for that, as you once took advantage of me!” said Marion, with enthusiasm.
The moon had risen and a whippoorwill was chanting his weird song on the lawn as Ben left them leaning on the gate.
It was past midnight before they finished the last touches in restoring their nest to its old homelike appearance and sat down happy and tired in the room in which Marion was born, brooding and dreaming and talking over the future.
The mother was hanging on the words of her daughter, all the baffled love of the dead poet husband, her griefs and poverty consumed in the glowing joy of new hopes. Her love for this child was now a triumphant passion, which had melted her own being into the object of worship, until the soul of the daughter was superimposed on the mother’s as the magnetized by the magnetizer.
“And you’ll never keep a secret from me, dear?” she asked Marion.