“It’s better, too, now than when I came home,” Helen thought, as with her rich, scarlet fruit she went slowly to the house. “Morris is here, and the new church, and if she likes she can teach Sunday-school, though maybe she will prefer going with Uncle Ephraim. He will be pleased if she does,” and pausing by the door, Helen looked across Fairy Pond in the direction of Silverton village, where the top of a slender spire was just visible—the spire of St. John’s, built within the year, and mostly at the expense of Dr. Morris Grant, who, a zealous churchman himself, had labored successfully to instill into Helen’s mind some of his own peculiar views, as well as to awaken in Mrs. Lennox’s heart the professions which had lain dormant for as long a time as the little black bound book had lain on the cupboard shelf, forgotten and unread.
How the doctor’s views were regarded by the Deacon’s family we shall see, by and by. At present our story has to do with Helen, holding her bowl of berries by the rear door and looking across the distant fields. With one last glance at the object of her thoughts she re-entered the house, where her mother was arranging the square table for dinner, bringing out the white stone china instead of the mulberry set kept for every day use.
“We ought to have some silver forks,” she said despondingly, as she laid by each plate the three tined forks of steel, to pay for which Helen and Katy had picked huckle-berries on the hills and dried apples from the orchard.
“Never mind, mother,” Helen answered cheerily: “if Katy is as she used to be she will care more for us than for silver, and I guess she is, for I imagine it would take a great deal to make her anything but a warmhearted, merry little creature.”
This was sensible Helen’s tribute of affection to the little, gay, chattering butterfly, at that moment an occupant of Uncle Ephraim’s corn-colored wagon, and riding with that worthy toward home, throwing kisses to every barefoot boy and girl she met, and screaming with delight as the old familiar way-marks met her view.
“There is Aunt Betsy, with her dress pinned up as usual,” she cried, when at last the wagon stopped before the door, and the four women came hurriedly out to meet her, almost smothering her with caresses, and then holding her off to see if she had changed.
She was very stylish in her pretty traveling dress of gray, made under Mrs. Woodhull’s supervision, and nothing could be more becoming than her jaunty hat, tied with ribbons of blue, while the dainty kids, bought to match the dress, fitted her fat hands charmingly, and the little high-heeled boots of soft prunella were faultless in their style. She was very attractive in her personal appearance, and the mental verdict of the four females regarding her intently was something as follows: Mrs. Lennox detected unmistakable marks of the grand society she had been mingling in, and was pleased accordingly; Aunt Hannah pronounced her “the prettiest creeter she had ever seen;” Aunt Betsy decided that her hoops were too big and her clothes too fine for a Barlow; while Helen, who looked beyond dress, or style, or manner, straight into her sister’s soft blue eyes, brimming with love and tears, decided that Katy was not changed for the worse. Nor was she. Truthful, loving, simple-hearted and full of playful life she had gone from home, and she came back the same, never once thinking of the difference between the farm-house and Mrs. Woodhull’s palace, or if she did, giving the preference to the former.
“It was perfectly splendid to get home,” she said, handing her gloves to Helen, her sun-shade to her mother, her satchel to Aunt Hannah, and tossing her bonnet in the vicinity of the water pail, from which it was saved by Aunt Betsy, who put it carefully in the press, examining it closely first and wondering how much it cost.
Deciding that “it was a good thumpin’ price,” she returned to the kitchen, where Katy, dancing and curvetting in circles, scarcely stood still long enough for them to see that in spite of boarding-school fare, of which she had complained so bitterly, her cheeks were rounder, her eyes brighter, and her figure fuller than of old. She had improved, but she did not appear to know it, or to guess how beautiful she was in the fresh bloom of seventeen, with her golden hair waving around her childish forehead, and her deep blue eyes laughing so expressively with each change of her constantly varying face. Everything animate and inanimate pertaining to the old house, came in for its share of notice. She kissed the kitten, squeezed the cat, hugged the dog, and hugged the little goat, tied to his post in the clover yard and trying so hard to get free. The horse, to whom she fed handfuls of grass, had been already hugged. She did that the first thing after strangling Uncle Ephraim as she alighted from the train, and some from the car window saw it, smiling at what they termed the charming simplicity of an enthusiastic school-girl. Blessed youth! blessed early girlhood, surrounded by a halo of rare beauty! It was Katy’s shield and buckler, warding off many a cold criticism which might otherwise have been passed upon her.
They were sitting down to dinner now, and the deacon’s voice trembled as, with the blessing invoked, he thanked God for bringing back the little girl, whose head was for a moment bent reverently, but quickly lifted itself up as its owner, in the same breath with that in which the deacon uttered his amen, declared how hungry she was, and went into rhapsodies over the nicely cooked viands which loaded the table. The best bits were hers that day, and she refused nothing until it came to Aunt Betsy’s onions, once her special delight, but now declined, greatly to the distress of the old lady, who having been on the watch for “quirks,” as she styled any departure from long established customs, now knew she had found one, and with an injured expression withdrew the offered bowl, saying sadly, “You used to eat ’em raw, Catherine; what’s got into you?”