“Oh, yes, indeed,” the sister answered readily. “He may be back at any minute now. He’ll be here on the day itself, for certain; he knows I want his help about some things.”
Without Lawson’s actual presence Dosia could fashion him into the man she loved, and pitch her own key of living higher. With that higher thought and her simple earnestness of purpose, she grew sweeter, dearer, more subtly sympathetic with others; she was no girl any longer, she said to herself, but a woman, for she was loved. How would his eyes claim hers when he came? Her cheeks mantled at the thought. There was a strange tingling emotion in everything connected with him. Ah, he would be worthy—he must! Suppose he were her hero, after all? Absence supplied him with the halo.
All the village was astir over the ball, as well as the Leverich house; it was impossible to overestimate its importance. Every woman was having a new dress made, or was absorbingly renovating an old one, and every man was sick and tired of hearing about the festivity. Everybody was asked; not to have an invitation to the Leverich ball was to be outside the pale indeed. Mrs. Snow was not going,—she had taken cold on the ride,—but it was to be one of Miss Bertha’s rare appearances in public; she was to chaperon Ada. Lois and Justin were coming; the former was to be one of the receiving party.
Dosia’s week had been one surging thought of Lawson, mixed with wild anticipations of the ball, yet even at dinner-time on the eventful night he had not arrived.
“Girard is coming, you know, after all,” said Leverich, as they assembled for the hasty meal in a little side-room. “I met him in town to-day, and was lucky enough to get him. That’s the right man for you, Dosia.”
“For me!” Dosia laughed, with her rising color. “Mr. Leverich, you are always trying to find the right man for me. I don’t want him!”
“You haven’t met him yet,” said Leverich wisely. “He’s the only fellow I know that I’d be willing to have you marry. I told him you were waiting for him.”
“Oh, oh, oh!” cried Dosia, in consternation.
“Now, don’t get excited,” said Leverich, smiling broadly. “I said he’d have to work to get you—that you weren’t the kind of a girl that came when she was beckoned to. Oh, I put your stock ’way up.”
He laughed at her horrified gaze, and then lapsed indulgently. “No, I’ll confess! I didn’t say anything of the kind; I was just romancing. I did tell him he’d meet a pretty nice girl—you don’t mind that, do you?”