There was a light step on the stairs; Mildred was coming up; and hastily covering his feet, he forced a smile upon his face, and handing her the letter, said: “It’s just as I expected. You’ll consent, of course?”
“Yes, but I shall write ever so much before I get to that, just to tantalize him,” returned Mildred, adding that she’d bring her answer down for Oliver to see if it would do!
A half-stifled moan escaped Oliver’s lips, but Mildred did not hear it, and she went dancing down the stairs singing to herself:
“Never morning smiled so gayly,
Never sky such radiance wore,
Never passed into the sunshine
Such a merry queen before.”
“A body’d s’pose you’d nothing to do but to sing and dance and trample on my corns,” growled Hepsy, still busy with her peas and casting a rueful glance at her foot, encased in a most wonderful shoe of her own manufacture.
“I am sorry, Aunt Hepsy,” said Mildred, “but your feet are always in the way,” and singing of the “sunshine,” and the “merry queen of May,” she went back to Beechwood, where a visitor was waiting for her, Mr. Robert Thornton!
He had followed Geraldine’s instructions implicitly, and simultaneously with the Mayfield mail-bag he entered the hotel where the Post-Office was kept. Seating himself in the sitting-room opposite, he watched the people as they came in for their evening papers, until, at last, looking from the window, he caught sight of the Judge and Finn. Moving back a little, so as not to be observed, he saw the former take the letter which he knew had been written by his son,—saw, too, the expression of the Judge’s face as he glanced at the superscription, and then handed it to Finn, bidding him hurry home, and saying he should not return for two hours or more.