"Forced to oppose you, but I don't think that you'll have cause to feel ashamed of me."
"You have already made me feel proud of your manliness," said Witherspoon.
Henry bowed, and Mrs. Witherspoon gave her husband an impulsive look of gratitude. The merchant continued:
"You have refused my offer, but you have not presumed upon your own position. Sincerity expects a reward, as a rule, and when a man is sincere at his own expense, there is something about him to admire. You don't prefer to live idly—to draw on me—and I should want no stronger proof that you are, indeed, my son. It is stronger than the gold chain you brought home with you, for that might have been found; but manly traits are not to be picked up; they come of inheritance. Well, I must go. I will speak to Brooks and see if anything can be done."
Rain began to fall. How full of restful meditation was this dripping-time, how brooding with half-formed, languorous thoughts that begin as an idea and end as a reverie. Sometimes a soothing spirit which the sun could not evoke from its boundless fields of light comes out of the dark bosom of a cloud. A bright day promises so much, so builds our hopes, that our keenest disappointments seem to come on a radiant morning, but on a dismal day, when nothing has been promised, a straggling pleasure is accidentally found and is pressed the closer to the senses because it was so unexpected.
To Henry came the conviction that he was doing his duty, and yet he could not at times subdue the feeling that pleasant environment was the advocate that had urged this decision. But he refused to argue with himself. Sometimes he strode after Mrs. Witherspoon as she went about the house, and he knew that she was happy because be followed her; and up and down the hall he romped with Ellen. They termed it a frolic that they should have enjoyed years ago, and they laughingly said that from the past they would snatch their separated childhood and blend it now. It was a back-number pleasure, they agreed, but that, like an old print, it held a charm in its quaintness. She brought out a doll that had for years been asleep in a little blue trunk. "Her name is Rose," she said, and with a broad ribbon she deftly made a cap and put it on the doll's head. After a while Rose was put to sleep again—the bright little mummy of a child's affection, Henry called her—and the playmates became older. She told him of the many suitors that had sought to woo her; of rich men; of poor young fellows who strove to keep time to the quick-changing tune of fashion; of moon-impressed youths who measured their impatient yearning.
"And when are you going to let one of them take you away?" Henry asked. Holding his hand, she had led him in front of a mirror.
"Oh, not at all," she answered, smiling at herself and then at him. "I haven't fallen in love with anybody yet."
"And is that necessary?"
"Why, you know it is, goose. I'd be a pretty-looking thing to marry a man I didn't love, wouldn't I?"