The child nodded, and the soft eyes gazing into Mildred's filled with tears. It was impossible to resist their eloquent pleading.
"Then cousin will accept it with her heartiest thanks, and value it more for the sake of the dear little giver than for its usefulness, its beauty, or its cost," Mildred said, taking Elsie on her lap and holding her in a close, loving embrace. "Dear little girlie," she murmured tenderly, "cousin will never intentionally rob you of the smallest pleasure or plant the least thorn in your path."
Another light tap at the door, and Mr. Dinsmore joined them. "Ah! that is right," he said with a smiling glance at the chain about Mildred's neck.
"Uncle, it is too much. You should not have allowed it. How could you?" Mildred asked half reproachfully.
"I only obeyed orders," was his laughing rejoinder. "Horace feels, as I do also, that we owe a debt of gratitude to your mother—to say nothing of the affection we have for you all; and he knows from the reports I have given him of his child that he could not afford her a greater gratification than the permission to do this. Beside, you have been extremely kind to her, and ought not to object to her making you some small return in the only way she can."
"O uncle! her love and sweet caresses have more than recompensed the little I have been able to do for her, the darling!" cried Mildred, heaping fresh caresses upon the little fair one.
Mr. Lord called that afternoon to report himself as arrived in the city, and to inquire if it were Mildred's intention to accept his escort on the homeward journey. His stay would necessarily be short—not more than two or three days.
Mildred met him with outstretched hand and eyes shining with pleasure. She had been so long away from home, was so hungry for a sight of anything connected with Pleasant Plains, that had she unexpectedly encountered Damaris Drybread she would very probably have greeted her with something like affection.
She perceived no change in Mr. Lord, except that he had a new set of teeth; he seemed to her in all other respects precisely what he was when she bade him good-by a year ago; but he was astonished, bewildered, delighted at the change in her. He had always admired her fresh young beauty, but it was as though the sweet bud had blossomed into the half-blown, lovely rose, with just a few of its petals still softly folded.
He blushed and stammered, answered her eager queries about old friends, and all that had been going on in Pleasant Plains since she left, in the most absent-minded way, and scarcely took his eyes from her face. In short, so conducted himself as to make his feelings toward her evident to the most careless observer.