“What is it, darling? Of what are you thinking?” Mr. Graham asked, at length, and ’Lena, taking the hand which he had laid gently upon her forehead, replied, “I am thinking of poor grandmother. She is not happy, now, at Maple Grove. She will be more unhappy should I leave her, and if you please, I would rather stay there with her. I can see you every day.”
“Do you suppose me cruel enough to separate you from your grandmother?” interrupted Mr. Graham. “No, no, I am not quite so bad as that. Woodlawn is large—there are rooms enough—and grandma shall have her choice, provided it is a reasonable one.”
“And your wife—Mrs. Graham? What will she say?” timidly inquired ’Lena, involuntarily shrinking from the very thought of coming in contact with the little lady who had so recently come up before her in the new and formidable aspect of stepmother!
Mr. Graham did not know himself what she would say, neither did he care. The fault of his youth once confessed, he felt himself a new man, able to cope with almost anything, and if in the future his wife objected to what he knew to be right, it would do her no good, for henceforth he was to rule his own house. Some such thoughts passed through his mind, but it would not be proper, he knew, to express himself thus to ’Lena, so he laughingly replied, “Oh, we’ll fix that, easily enough.”
At the time he wrote to Mr. Livingstone, he had also sent a letter to his wife, announcing his safe return from Europe, and saying that he should be at home as soon as ’Lena’s health would admit of her traveling. Not wishing to alarm her unnecessarily, he merely said of Durward, that he had found him at Laurel Hill. To this letter Mrs. Graham replied immediately, and with a far better grace than her husband had expected. Very frankly she confessed the unkind part she had acted toward ’Lena, and while she said she was sorry, she also spoke of the reaction which had taken place in the minds of Lena’s friends, who, she said, would gladly welcome her back,
The continued absence of Durward was now the only drawback to ’Lena’s happiness, and with a comparatively light heart, she began to anticipate her journey home. Most liberally did Mr. Graham pay for both himself and ’Lena, and Uncle Timothy, as he counted the shining coin, dropping it upon the table to make sure it was not bogus, felt quite reconciled to his recent loss of fifty dollars. Jerry, the driver, was also generously rewarded for his kindness to the stranger-girl, and just before he left, Mr. Graham offered to make him his chief overseer, if he would accompany him to Kentucky.
“You are just the man I want,” said he, “and I know you’ll like it. What do you say?”
For the sake of occasionally seeing ’Lena, whom he considered as something more than mortal, Jerry would gladly have gone, but he was a staunch abolitionist, dyed in the wool, and scratching his head, he replied, “I’m obleeged to you, but I b’lieve I’d rather drive hosses than niggers!”
“Mebby you could run one on ’em off, and so make a little sumthin’,” slyly whispered Uncle Timothy, his eyes always on the main chance, but it was no part of Jerry’s creed to make anything, and as ’Lena at that moment appeared, he beat a precipitate retreat, going out behind the church, where he watched the departure of his southern friends, saying afterward, to Mrs. Aldergrass, who chided him for his conduct, that “he never could bid nobody good-bye, he was so darned tender-hearted!”