She laughed again, a little tremulously. Suddenly she began to see what she had never quite seen before. Poor Daniel cared for her! She was afraid that he cared more than she had dreamed. It touched her so much that her eyes misted.
“Nightmare? Not a bit of it. I tell you what to do, Virginia—when you’re through with it let me have it. I’ll hang it up over my desk when I want an inspiration. A poor lawyer needs an inspiration. The law’s as dry as dust.”
She lifted her eyes reluctantly but smilingly to him. She had almost been afraid to meet them, but she was not now. Dan’s look was just the same look he had always given her—and she had never understood!
“I’ll give it to you for a waste-paper basket,” she said gaily.
Then she stopped, her hand on the stone gate-post of the old church. They had been walking slowly through the lane, and Daniel halted, surprised.
“Going in here, Virginia?”
She smiled.
“Yes. There’s to be a Sunday-school festival. Besides, they’ve just cleaned up the church. I took all our prayer-books away for the refurbishing; now I’m going to put them back in the pew.”
As she spoke, he glanced down at the armful of books she held. He had been to church with the Denbighs more than once, and he remembered the colonel’s big prayer-book and hymnal and the books for their guests. He had used that old red one himself. Then his eye fell upon two smaller ones of brown morocco with Virginia’s monogram on the clasp of the case.
“You’re still carrying your old set, Virginia,” he remarked thoughtfully. Here was a chance for a gift, perhaps. “They’re worn at the edges.”