Miss Phœbe released the low key of the organ. But her work had been well done. The note that she struck had beaten down the doors of a closed memory; and Father Abram held his lost Aglaia close in his arms.
When you visit Lakelands they will tell you more of this story. They will tell you how the lines of it were afterward traced, and the history of the miller’s daughter revealed after the gipsy wanderers had stolen her on that September day, attracted by her childish beauty. But you should wait until you sit comfortably on the shaded porch of the Eagle House, and then you can have the story at your ease. It seems best that our part of it should close while Miss Phœbe’s deep bass note was yet reverberating softly.
And yet, to my mind, the finest thing of it all happened while Father Abram and his daughter were walking back to the Eagle House in the long twilight, almost too glad to speak.
“Father,” she said, somewhat timidly and doubtfully, “have you a great deal of money?”
“A great deal?” said the miller. “Well, that depends. There is plenty unless you want to buy the moon or something equally expensive.”
“Would it cost very, very much,” asked Aglaia, who had always counted her dimes so carefully, “to send a telegram to Atlanta?”
“Ah,” said Father Abram, with a little sigh, “I see. You want to ask Ralph to come.”
Aglaia looked up at him with a tender smile.
“I want to ask him to wait,” she said. “I have just found my father, and I want it to be just we two for a while. I want to tell him he will have to wait.”