A long time they talked together, and the sun was setting ere Morris rose, suggesting that she go home, as the night dew would soon be falling.
“And you are not as strong as you once were,” he added, pulling her shawl around her shoulders with careful solicitude, and thinking how slender she had become.
From the back parlor Helen saw them coming up the path, detecting the changed expression of Morris’s face, and feeling a pang of fear when, as he left them after nine o’clock, she heard her mother say that he had not appeared so natural since Katy went away as he had done that night. Knowing what she did, Helen trembled for Morris, with this terrible temptation before him, and Morris trembled for himself as he went back the lonely path, and stopped again beneath the chestnut tree where he had so lately sat with Katy. There was a great fear at his heart, and it found utterance in words as kneeling by the rustic bench with only the lonely night around him and the green boughs over head, he asked that he might be kept from sin, both in thought and deed, and be to Katy Cameron just what she took him for, her friend and elder brother. And God, who knew the sincerity of the heart thus pleading before him, heard and answered the prayer, so that after that first night of trial Morris could look on Katy without a wish that she were otherwise than Wilford Cameron’s wife and the mother of his child. He was happier because of her being at the farm-house, though he did not go there one half as often as she came to him.
Those September days were happy ones to Katy, who became a child again—a petted, spoiled child, whom every one caressed and suffered to have her way. To Uncle Ephraim it was as if some bright angel had suddenly dropped into his path, and flooded it with sunshine. He was so glad to have again his “Katy-did,” who went with him to the fields, waiting patiently till his work was done, and telling him of all the wondrous things she saw abroad, but speaking little of her city life. That was something she did not care to talk about, and but for Wilford’s letters, and the frequent mention of baby, the deacon could easily have imagined that Katy had never left him. But these were barriers between the old life and the present; these were the insignia of Mrs. Wilford Cameron, who was watched and envied by the curious Silvertonians, and pronounced charming by them all. Still there was one drawback to Katy’s happiness. She missed her child, mourning for it so much that her family, quite as anxious as herself to see it, suggested her sending for it. It would surely take no harm with them, and Marian would come with it, if Mrs. Hubbell could not. To this plan Katy listened more willingly from the fact that Wilford had gone West, and the greater the distance between them the more she dared to do. And so Marian Hazelton was one day startled at the sudden appearance at the cottage of Katy, who had come to take her and baby to Silverton.
There was no resisting the vehemence of Katy’s arguments, and before the next day’s sun-setting, the farm-house, usually so quiet and orderly, had been turned into one general nursery, where Baby Cameron reigned supreme, screaming with delight at the tin ware which Aunt Betsy brought out, from the cake-cutter to the dipper, the little creature beating a noisy tattoo upon the latter with an iron spoon, and then for diversion burying its fat dimpled hands in Uncle Ephraim’s long white hair, for the old man went down upon all fours to do his great-grand-niece homage.
That night Morris came up, stopping suddenly as a loud baby laugh reached him, even across the orchard, and leaning for a moment against the wall, while he tried to prepare himself for the shock it would be to see Katy’s child, and hold it in his arms, as he knew he must, or the mother be aggrieved.
He had supposed it was pretty, but he was not prepared for the beautiful little cherub which in its short white dress, with its soft curls of golden brown clustering about its head, stood holding to a chair, pushing it occasionally, and venturing now and then to take a step, while its infantile laugh mingled with the screams of its delighted auditors, watching it with so much interest.
There was one great, bitter, burning pang, and then, folding his arms composedly upon the window sill, Dr. Grant stood looking in upon the occupants of the room, whistling at last to baby, as he was accustomed to whistle to the children of his patients.
“Oh, Morris,” Katy cried, “Baby can almost walk, Marian has taken so much pains, and she can say ‘papa.’ Isn’t she a beauty?”
Baby had turned her head by this time, her ear caught by the whistle and her eye arrested by something in Morris which fascinated her gaze. Perhaps she thought of Wilford, of whom she had been very fond, for she pushed her chair towards him and then held up her fat arms for him to take her.