The Squire reached out a hand towards Lucina, caught her first by her flowing skirt, then by her fair arm, and drew her close to his side and pulled down her soft face to his. “Well, Pretty, how goes the world?” he said, with a laugh, which had almost the catch of a sob, so anxiously tender he was of her, and so timid before his own delight in her.
When she had kissed him and bade him good-night, Lucina went up to her own chamber and her mother with her.
“Abigail follows the child, since she came home, like a hen with one chicken,” the Squire said, smiling almost foolishly in his utter pride of this beautiful daughter.
The Colonel nodded, frowning gravely over his pipe at the opposite window. “She makes me think a little of my wife at her age,” he said.
The Squire started. It was the first time he had ever heard the Colonel mention his wife. He sighed, looked at him, and hesitated with a delicacy of reticence. “It must have been a hard blow,” he ventured, finally.
The Colonel nodded.
“Any children?” asked the Squire, after a little.
“No,” replied Colonel Lamson. He puffed at his pipe, his face was redder than usual. “Well, Eben,” he said, after a pause, during which the two men smoked energetically, “I hope you'll keep her a while.”
“You don't think she looks delicate?” cried the Squire, turning pale. “Her mother doesn't think so.”
The Colonel laughed heartily. “When a girl blossoms out like that there'll be plenty trying the garden-gate,” said he.