She lay back in the armchair with the family clustered around her, their tongues loosened.
“We all knew about it—” “We promised not to tell—” “We wanted to see you get it—” “There won’t be anybody as pretty as you, mamma.” “You left out that letter of measurements, and papa and I took it to Aunt Cynthia”—this from Josephine—“and she helped us. She says you’re disgracefully unselfish.” The girl emphasized her remark with a sudden and strangling hug. “There isn’t anybody in the world as good as you are. I was watching you all last week; I knew you wouldn’t buy a thing. But it was papa who thought of doing it, when I told him. Feel the stuff—isn’t it lovely? so thick and soft. He and Aunt Cynthia said you should have the best; she can spend money! And you’re to go uptown to-morrow with me to buy a hat with red in it, and if the suit needs altering it can be done then. Don’t you like it, mamma?”
“It’s perfectly beautiful,” said the mother, her hands clasped in those of her three darlings, but her eyes sought her husband’s.
He alone said nothing, but stood regarding her with twinkling eyes, through a suspicion of moisture. What did she see in them? The love and kindness that clothed her not only with silk and wool, but with honor; that made of this new raiment a vesture wherein she entered that special and exquisite heaven of the woman whose husband and children arise up and call her blessed.
Fairy Gold
Fairy Gold
WHEN Mr. William Belden walked out of his house one wet October evening and closed the hall door carefully behind him, he had no idea that he was closing the door on all the habits of his maturer life and entering the borders of a land as far removed from his hopes or his imagination as the country of the Gadarenes.