She was his only child, and the love between them was passing the love of the father and daughter of every-day life. It was an almost romantic attachment.
Like most only daughters, Lola was precocious, far in advance of her years in thoughtfulness and emotion, though perhaps a little behind the average girl of twelve in the severities of feminine education. She had been her mother’s chief companion ever since she could speak, the confidante of all that mother’s thoughts and fancies, which were as innocent as those of childhood itself. She had read much more than most girls of her age, and had been made familiar with poets whose names are only known to the schoolgirl in a history of literature. She knew a good deal about the best books in European literature; but, most of all, she knew the hearts and minds of her father and mother, their loves and likings, their joys and sorrows. She had never been shut out from their confidence; she had never been told to go and play when they wanted to talk to each other. She had sat with them, and walked and ridden and driven with them ever since she was old enough to dispense with her nurse’s arms. She had lived her young life with them, and had been a part of their lives.
George Greswold looked up from his Athenæum in quick alarm.
“Fever!” he exclaimed, “fever at Enderby!”
“Strange, isn’t it, father? Everybody is wondering about it. Enderby has always been such a healthy village, and you have taken such pains to make it so.”
“Yes, love, I have done my best. I am a landlord for pleasure, and not for gain, as you and mother know.”
“And what seems strangest and worst of all,” continued Lola, “is that this dreadful fever has broken out among the people you and mother and I are fondest of—our old friends and pensioners—and the children we know most about. It seems so hard that those you and mother have helped the most should be the first to be ill.”
“Yes, love, that must seem very hard to my tender-hearted darling.”
Her father looked up at her fondly as she stood behind his chair, her white arm leaning upon his shoulder. The summer was in its zenith. It was strawberry-time, rose-time, haymaking-time—the season of nightingales and meadow-sweet and tall Mary lilies, and all those lovely things that cluster in the core of summer’s great warm heart. Lola was all in white—a loose muslin frock, straight from shoulder to instep. Her thick gold hair fell straight as her frock below her ungirdled waist, and, in her white and gold, she had the look of an angel in an early Italian picture. Her eyes were as blue as that cloudless sky of midsummer which took a deeper azure behind the black-green branches of the cedar.
“My pet, I take it this fever is some slight summer malady. Cottagers are such ravens. They always make the worst of an illness.”