Elizabeth stiffened. It was her poem. He walked over to the lamp and read it aloud. It was that old, old one of the moonrise and sunset she had written long ago, now polished and re-dressed in better verse; a pretty little thing, full of color, bright and picturesque, nothing more. But it was Elizabeth's first success. The Dominion had accepted it with a flattering comment that had made her heart beat faster ever since. But the young poetess was far more anxious as to what "the boys" would think of it than the most critical editor in all broad Canada.
Charles Stuart knew how to read, and he expressed the sentiment of the pretty verses in a way that made Elizabeth look at him with her breath suspended. They sounded so much better than she had dared hope.
John looked up with shining eyes. "I've seen that very thing at home, at The Dale, in the evening." He turned sharply and looked at his sister's flushed face and downcast eyes. "Hooroo!" he shouted. "A poetess! Oh, Lizzie. This is a terrible blow!" He fell back into his chair and fanned himself.
"Do you really truly like it, John?" the author asked tremblingly.
John stretched out his hand for the magazine, and Elizabeth, watching him as he read, drew a big breath of joy. She could tell by his kindling eye that he was both proud and pleased. But, as she expected, he expressed no praise.
"There's a good deal of hot air in it, Lizzie," he remarked dryly. "And say, you and Mac must have been collaborating. He had that very same expression in his speech last night—'member, Mac, when you brought down the house that time when you flung something 'against the eternal heavens,' or some such disorderly act. Here's Lizzie up to the same business."
The young orator looked foolishly pleased, and the young poetess pulled the critic's ears. But her heart was light and joyous. John liked her poem, and that was more to her than the most flattering praise from the public. For Elizabeth was much more a woman than a poet.
"You're a barbarian, John Gordon," she cried. "He doesn't know a finely turned phrase from a dissecting-knife; does he, Stuart? But really, it sounds far better than I thought it could. You read so well."
"When did you take to rhyming, Lizzie?" asked her brother. "I really didn't know it was in you."
But Elizabeth was watching Charles Stuart anxiously. He had taken up the magazine again and was reading it absorbedly. She waited, but he said nothing. But those dark, deep eyes of his, so like his mother's, had a wistful look, a look that reminded Elizabeth of the expression in Mother MacAllister's on the occasion of her last visit home. She regarded him, rather troubled. What was the matter with her little verses? She knew Charles Stuart was much more capable of a sound judgment than John; she knew also that his kindly heart would prompt him to say something pleasant if he could.