"And there are some Sisters of Charity from one of the convents and an old Indian with a load of baskets is begging from them—Don't you want to look at these bicyclists, Vesper? One, two, three, four, five, six. They are from Boston, I know, by the square collars on their jerseys. The Nova Scotians do not dress in that way."
Vesper gave only a partial though pleased attention to his mother, who had picked up an astonishing amount of neighborhood news, and as he lay on a rug at her feet, with his hat pulled over his brows, his mind soared up to the blue sky above him. During his illness he had always seemed to be sinking down into blackness and desolation. With returning health and decreased nervousness his soul mounted upward, and he would lie for hours at a time bathed in a delicious reverie and dreaming of "a nest among the stars."
"And there is the blacksmith from the corner," continued Mrs. Nimmo, "who comes here so often to borrow things that a blacksmith is commonly supposed to have. Yesterday he wanted a hammer. 'Not a hammer,' said Célina to me, 'but a wife.'"
Vesper's brain immediately turned an abrupt somersault in a descent from the sky to earth. "What did you say, mother?"
"Merely that the blacksmith wishes to marry our landlady. It will be an excellent match for her. Don't you think so?"
"In some respects,—yes."
"She is too young, and too handsome, to remain a widow. Célina says that she has had a great many admirers, but she has never seemed to fancy any one but the blacksmith. She went for a drive with him last Sunday evening. You know that is the time young Acadiens call on the girls they admire. You see them walking by, or driving in their buggies. If a girl's fiancé did not call on her that evening she would throw him over—There she is now with your beef tea," and Mrs. Nimmo admiringly watched Rose coming from the kitchen and carefully guarding a dainty china cup in her hand.
Vesper got up and took it from her. "Don't you think it is nonsense for me to be drinking this every morning?" he asked.
Rose looked up at him as he stood, tall, keen-eyed, interested, and waiting for her answer. "What does madame, your mother, say?" she asked, indicating Mrs. Nimmo, by a pretty gesture.
"His mother says," remarked Mrs. Nimmo, indulgently, "that her son should take any dose, no matter how disagreeable, if it has for its object the good of his health."