“She cried then because she was hungry,” said the matter-of-fact Eddy.
Sophy laughed, and kissed her father over and over again. Morely looked at his wife. There was something to be told, but not now. That must wait.
Nor can all the pleasure of that day be told. The little log-house was like a palace in the eyes of Morely. Indeed, it would have been very nice in any one’s eyes. The beds had been moved into the inner room, now that no fire was needed; and the large room, which was parlour and kitchen all in one, was as neat and clean as it could be made. It was bright, too, with flowers and evergreens and branches of cherry-blossom; and there were many comfortable and pretty things in it that Morely had never seen there before.
They did not stay much in the house, however. Mr and Mrs Grattan came up in the afternoon, and with them one whom John Morely presented to his wife as the best friend she had in the world, after Grattan and his wife—his friend Samuel Muir. Knowing a little of what he had been to her husband all these months past, Mrs Morely welcomed him with smiles—and tears, too—and many a silent blessing: and if he had been the head of the firm—Steel and Ironside in one—he could not have been a more honoured guest.
They sat out on the hill during most of the afternoon. The day was perfect. It was warm in the sun, but cool in the shadow of the evergreens. The maples and elms did not throw deep shadows yet, and the air was sweet and fresh and still.
It was a very happy day to them all. To Samuel Muir it was a day never to be forgotten. Montreal is not a very great city. An hour’s walk from the heart of it, in any direction, will bring one either to the river or to fields where wild flowers grow. But his life had been town life—and a very busy one; and to sit in the mild air, amid the sweet sounds and sweeter silence of the spring time, among all these happy children, was something wonderful to him. His constant anxious care for Morely all the winter had done much to make a man of him. His little weaknesses and vanities had fallen from him in the midst of his real work; and seeing the happy mother and her children, his heart filled with humble thankfulness to God, who had permitted him to help the husband and father to stand against his enemy.
As for Stephen Grattan, the sight of his face was good that day. He did not say much, but sat looking out over the river, and the village, and the hills beyond, as though he was not seeing them, but something infinitely fairer. Now and then, as he gazed, his thoughts overflowed in words not his own: “As the mountains are round about Jerusalem, so the Lord is round about His people.” “Ask and receive, that your joy may be full.” And sometimes he sang Dolly’s favourite chorus, repeating in queer, old, trembling strains,—
“His loving-kindness, oh, how good!”
But he said little besides. Even Dolly spoke more than he that day, and with great pains drew out John Morely to tell how his prospects were brightening, and how since the first of May he had been foreman among his fellow-workmen, and how if things went moderately well with him he should have a better home than the little log-house for his wife and children before many months were over.
“Not just yet, however,” he said, looking with pleased eyes at the brown, healthy faces of the little lads. “No place I could put them in could make up to them for these open fields and this pure air. I think, Alice, they will be better here for a time.”