Lizbeth of the Dale

by Mary Esther Miller MacGregor

The young men laughed, and John Coulson looked admiringly at her. John Coulson was too apt to encourage Lizzie in this sort of thing, Annie felt. She smiled indulgently at her sister, but said nothing. Mrs. John Coulson alone knew why poor unselfish Tom had never married, but hers was a loyal friendship and she had kept his secret as faithfully as he had once kept hers.

And now they had come prancing out from behind the screen of elm trees, and The Dale lay spread out before them—the big gate between the old willows, the long lane bordered by blossoming cherry-trees, and the old stone house with its prim flower beds in front. Their homecoming was a few days earlier than expected, and Mr. Gordon was all unconsciously hoeing at the back of the field, but Sarah Emily spied them as they pulled up at the gate, and came running round the house shouting in a most ungenteel but warm-hearted fashion that the folks was come home.

Elizabeth sprang from the carriage and ran down the lane to meet Mary. Though she came home often, the joy of reunion with her family never palled. There was no place like The Dale for Elizabeth, no folk like her own folk. She did not even notice in her joyous hurry that Charles Stuart had left and was striding homeward down Champlain's Road.

Mary came running out to meet her. She was a tall girl now, taller than Elizabeth, but her delicately beautiful face was wasted and pale, except for two pink spots on her cheeks. Miss Gordon was just behind her. She had not grown much older looking in the past few years, and unconsciously had lost some of her stately rigidity. She looked extremely handsome, her face flushed and alight with happiness. She did not kiss the visitors, except Baby Jackie, but her eyes shone with welcome. As she greeted John, she laid one hand for a moment on his shoulder. She looked at him closely, noting with pride the new air of gentility even one year at college had given the boy. But as she took Annie's boy into her arms Miss Gordon's face grew positively sweet.

She had not the privilege of bearing the precious bundle far. Sarah Emily, who had rushed back to the house to don a clean apron, met her at the door, and snatching the Vision fled upstairs with him, inquiring loudly of the blessed petums if it wasn't just Sarah Emily's ownest, darlingest love.

Mr. Gordon came hurrying in from the field, and after he had made them all welcome over again, he followed John about in a happy daze, saying again and again that if only Mary and Malcolm were here—no, no, Archie and Lizzie—tuts, it was Malcolm and Jean he meant,—if they were only home now, the family would be complete—"almost complete," he added. And then his eyes once more took on their far-away look, and he slipped away into the study, whither Elizabeth softly followed him.

In the late afternoon the younger boys came home from school, and the excitement had to be all lived through again. They all wandered about the old house, everyone following in the wake of the baby. The Dale rooms were not the bare, echoing spaces they once were. Just two years before, Cousin Griselda had passed quietly away, and her little annuity, as well as the property in McGlashan Street, had passed to Miss Gordon. The latter had experienced much real grief over her loss, and had taken pains in the intervening time to impress upon all her family that this bereavement was part of the sacrifice she had deliberately made for them. Nevertheless, the Gordons had benefited some from the slight addition to their income, and there were many comforts in the big stone house which had been absent in the early days. Early in the evening Mother MacAllister and Charles Stuart came over, and Granny Teeter returned their visit, bringing with her Auntie Jinit McKerracher, who had dropped in. Elizabeth and Mary and Sarah Emily, when they were not quarreling over who should nurse Baby Jackie, managed to set the table for a second late tea. A grand tea it was too, with the big shining tablecloth Aunt Margaret had brought from the Old Country, and the high glass preserve dish that always had reminded Elizabeth in her early years of the pictures of the laver in the tabernacle court. It was a great day altogether, and Elizabeth enjoyed so much the old joy of straying down the lane and over the fields with John and Charles Stuart, that when John Coulson drove up to the door, and Annie with the Vision, once more a bundle of shawls, was put into the carriage, she was glad she was to remain at home till Monday.

The Coulson family drove away, with a bunch of early Dale rhubarb, and green onions, under the carriage seat, along with a fresh loaf of Mother MacAllister's bread, and a roll of Auntie Jinit McKerracher's butter, and a jar of Granny Teeter's cider. When they were gone, John went into the study for a talk with his father alone, and Elizabeth and Mary repaired to their little room to discuss the week's doings. It was not the bare room it once was; the girl's deft hands had decorated it with cheap but dainty muslin curtains, pictures, and bric-a-brac. Elizabeth went down on her knees to clear out a bureau drawer for the clothes she had brought.

She laughed as she brought up some old treasures. Here was a pair of white pillow covers that Mrs. Jarvis had sent her on her thirteenth birthday. There was a motto outlined on each, and silk threads for working it had accompanied the gift. But Elizabeth had finished only one, and put a half-dozen stitches into the other. "Look at those!" she cried, half-laughing, half-ashamed, as she hung them over a chair. "I wonder when I'll ever get them finished." Mary picked them up, and examined them. "You really ought to do them, Lizzie. They'd be so pretty for our bed done in the pale blue silk." She read the mottoes aloud, "I slept and dreamed that life was beauty," and the second, "I awoke and found that life was duty." "It's just like you to drop a thing in the middle and not finish it." Mary was growing more like her Aunt Margaret every day in her stately prim manner.

"I didn't drop it in the middle, Miss Wiseacre," said her sister. "Can't you see I started the Duty one. It's ten stitches past the middle!" She caught them up, bound "the beauty one" about her head, stuck the other into her belt for an apron, twisted her face up into a perfect imitation of Auntie Jinit McKerracher, and proceeded to give Mary the latest piece of gossip, in a broad Scotch accent, ending up as Auntie Jinit always did, "Noo, ah'm jist tellin' ye whit ah heered, an' if it's a lee, ah didna mak it!"