"Father won't have mushrooms with his steak to-day," Lois commented, looking ruefully at the little basket, which she still held in her hand.
They stopped at the roadside, walking hand in hand like two children, and looked back at the ruin. "It was a home once," Gifford said, "and there was love there; and so it begins over again for us,—love, and happiness, and all of life."
"Oh, Giff," the girl said softly, "I don't deserve"—
But that, of course, he would not hear. When they came to the rectory gate,—and never did it take so long to walk from East Hill to the rectory,—Gifford said, "Now let's go and tell Helen; we've kept her out of our joy too long." They met her in the cool, dusky hall, and Gifford, taking her hand, said gently, "Be glad, too, Helen!"
Lois had put her arms about her cousin, and without further words Helen knew.
And so Helen Ward's duty came to her, the blessedness and helpfulness of being needed; when Lois went to her new home, Helen would be necessary to her uncle, and to be necessary would save her life from hardness. There need be no thought of occupation now. When Mr. Dale heard the news, he said his congratulations were not only for Lois and Gifford, but for Helen, and after that for Ashurst.
A genuine Ashurst engagement was a great thing, and the friends of the young people received it in their several ways. Dr. Howe was surprised, but disposed to make the best of it. "This is always the way," he said, with his big, jolly laugh: "a man brings up his girls, and then, just as soon as they get old enough to amount to something and be a comfort to him, some other man comes along and carries them off. What? Mind, now, Gifford, don't you go further away than Mercer!"
As for Mrs. Dale, she was delighted. "It is what I have always wanted; it is the one thing I've tried to bring about; and if Lois will do as I tell her, and be guided by a wiser head than her own, I have no doubt she will be very reasonably happy."