At the sight of Mildred she arose, and dropping a low curtsey, began in her fretful, querulous way: “I wonder now if you can stoop to come down here; but I s’pose it’s Oliver that’s brought you. It beats all how folks that gets a little riz will forget them that had all the trouble of bringin’ ’em up. Oliver is up charmber with the headache, and I don’t b’lieve he wants to be disturbed.”
“Yes, he does,” said Mildred, and lifting the old-fashioned wooden latch, she was soon climbing the crazy stairs which creaked to her bounding tread.
Of his own accord, and because he knew it would please Mildred, the Judge had caused what was once her chamber at the gable-roof to be finished off and fitted into a cozy library for Oliver, who when at home spent many a happy hour there, bending sometimes over his books, and thinking again of the years gone by, and of the little girl who had often cried herself to sleep within those very walls. It was well with her now, he knew and he blessed God that it was so, even though his poor feet might never tread the flowery path in which it was given her to walk. He had not seen her for nearly two years, but she had written to him regularly, and from her letters he knew she was the same warm-hearted, impulsive Milly who had once made all the sunshine of his life. She had grown up very beautiful, too, for among his classmates were several whose homes were in Charlestown, and who, as a matter of course, felt a deep interest in the Seminary girls, particularly in Miss Howell, who was often quoted in his presence, his companions never dreaming that she was aught to the “club-footed Lexicon,” as they called the studious Oliver.
Lawrence Thornton, too, when he came to the college commencement, had said to him playfully:
“Clubs, your sister Milly, as you call her, is very beautiful, with eyes like stars and hair the color of the chestnuts I used to gather in the Mayfield woods. If I were you, I should be proud to call her sister.”
And Oliver was proud; but when the handsome, manly figure of Lawrence Thornton had vanished through the door, he fancied he breathed more freely, though why he should do so he could not tell, for he liked to hear Mildred praised.
“I shall see her for myself during this vacation,” he thought; and after his return to Beechwood he was nearly as impatient as the Judge for her arrival. “She will be home to-day,” he thought on the morning when he knew she was expected, and the sunlight dancing on the wall seemed all the brighter to him.
He had hoped to meet her at Beechwood, but his enemy, the headache, came on in time to prevent his doing so, and with a sigh of disappointment he went to his little room, and leaning back in his easy-chair, counted the lagging moments until he heard the well-known step upon the stairs, and knew that she had come. In a moment she stood beside him, and was looking into his white, worn face, just as he was gazing at her in all her glowing, healthy beauty. He had kissed her heretofore when they met,—kissed her when they parted; but he dared not do it now, for she seemed greatly changed. He had lost his little, romping, spirited Milly, and he knew there was a dividing line between himself and the grown young lady standing before him. But no such thoughts intruded themselves upon Mildred; Oliver, to her, was the same good-natured boy who had waded barefoot with her in the brook, picked “huckleberries” on the hills and chestnuts in the wood. She never once thought of him as a man, and just as she was wont to do of old, just so she did now,—she wound her arms around his neck, and kissing his forehead, where the blue veins were swelling, she told him how glad she was to be there with him again,—told him how sorry she was to find him so feeble and thin, and lastly, how proud she was when she heard from Lawrence Thornton that he was first in his class, and bade fair to make the great man she long ago predicted he would make. Then she paused for his reply, half expecting that he would compliment her in return, for Mildred was well used to flattery, and rather claimed it as her due.
Oliver read as much in her speaking eyes, and when, laying her hat upon the floor, she sat down upon a stool at his feet, he laid his hand fondly on her hair, and said:
“You are very, very beautiful, Milly!”