When she returned home she had temporarily forgotten all about her little tiff with Wizard Hermann that morning, and as she saw him nowhere about, it did not occur to her mind. She avoided every one, which was not hard to do, the household consisting of only five members—her guardian and self, her former governess, who now combined teaching and housekeeping by way of economy, a fat black cook, and a man of all work, a misshapen, dwarfish creature of tremendous strength.
The day and night seemed interminably long to Leola, who lay awake many hours through pure joy of this blissful something that had come so suddenly into the placid current of her young life. Heaven forefend her from ever knowing the wakefulness of sorrow!
Bright and early the next morning she was out in the old-fashioned garden, gathering roses, dewy sweet and lovely, and it was not difficult to coax black Betsy for a bit of early breakfast before the others appeared.
Then, because she did not want to seem too anxious, Leola walked the two miles to Widow Gray’s cottage.
When Wizard Hermann asked at breakfast after the truant, Betsy, who was bringing in the toast, answered that “young miss” had gone to carry some flowers to a sick friend.
“Humph!” was his careless rejoinder, little dreaming that the sick friend was a charming young man who had already carried Leola’s heart by storm.
Meanwhile the young girl went blithely on her way, glad at heart with a strange, new emotion, yet not realizing why the world seemed so much sweeter than yesterday, the flowers fairer, the skies brighter, and all nature attuned to a diviner melody. Even her own rare beauty had gained another indefinable charm from the vibrations of love, pulsing joyfully through all her frame. She knew that she was drawn by invisible cords to the handsome stranger, but she imputed it to keen interest in one she had saved from death.
Widow Gray welcomed her with beaming smiles.
“Oh, Miss Mead, such a rapid improvement you never saw in your life! Why, after he had rested all day and night, he was like another man, and the doctor let him dress this morning and lie on the lounge in his room. He says he has no internal trouble at all, and need only stay in a few days till his head gets well. Wasn’t he lucky? for the doctor says the tumble might have killed him, and that it was a miracle it didn’t. But, laws, he’s as right as a trivet, and has taken a poached egg and bit of toast this morning. What sweet, sweet flowers! Come right in, do, and see him; he’s expecting you.”
How his blue eyes beamed as she entered with the flowers! Leola would never forget that look to her dying day.