And now appeared Gretchen with a letter for Mr. Winthrop. Lily turned it over curiously, noting, as she passed it to her grandfather, that it was a city letter, and a feeble hope sprang up that Mr. Haines had relented, and would allow them to remain until spring.
Mr. Winthrop read it slowly through, once and again, and then almost sprang to his feet, forgetting his lameness in the excitement. "Lily," he called, "come here, quick! This is most extraordinary; read that—read it aloud! It must be that I have made some mistake." And Lily read:
"MR. WINTHROP:
"Dear Sir: I write to inform you that I have been entrusted by a dear friend of yours—who is at present absent—with a piece of property which he desires to bestow upon you as a Christmas gift. The cottage is in the city, pleasantly located, with a fine greenhouse in good order. The key and the deed of it will be sent to you in the course of a month, when it will be ready for occupancy. I advise you thus early that you may shape your plans accordingly.
"Yours truly,
"A. HATHAWAY.
"Now, dear child, what is the meaning of all this? Could anybody play such a cruel joke upon us?"
"Oh, no, no, Grandpa," Lily said, her face radiant. "It is the answer to our prayers. Have we not asked and asked Him for a home, and now he has sent it to us?"
Grandpa closed his eyes, and there was silence for a moment; each knew that the other was whispering thanksgivings too deep for spoken words.
"Bless the Lord, O my soul," Grandpa murmured at length. "This deliverance came for the sake of you, his little one; such stupid unbelief as mine could never have brought the blessing. But who is Mr. Hathaway, and why in reason did he not tell me the name of my friend? I will write to him this very evening, and know something more about this wonderful transaction."
It was as good as a play could have been to others, and much better than one could possibly be to Mr. Thornton, when he called later in the evening to inquire after the sprained ankle, to observe the change in the manner of both. The grandfather appeared to have chopped off ten years of age, and seasoned his speech with lively sallies and sparkles of wit as he had not done for a long time. The girl's eyes, too, had lost their look of patient care and sparkled with repressed joyousness. She seemed like one in possession of some happy secret, and in haste to be alone that she might turn it over and look at it. This was pure, exquisite pleasure to turn sighs into smiles. He knew us well who said, "It is more blessed to give than to receive."
"Hathaway" was Mr. Thornton's middle name, after one of his ancestors, "Allan Hathaway." He had never lived in that vicinity, so his namesake knew that he might safely hide behind it, especially as there was no one of the same name in the city. He felt too that he could truthfully say that he acted under the directions of another, who was Mr. Winthrop's dear friend, for was not the Lord whom they served both Master and Friend, and who but he had put it into his own heart to remember his servant?
The sprained ankle, though doing well, yet gave Mr. Thornton continued pretexts for calling very often. He brought in new books and the daily papers, and sometimes stopped to read the news to the invalid; then the two held many arguments and discussions on the topics of the day. Their views were too nearly alike to make the discussions very lively, though the fact gave each an exalted opinion of the other. Lily seldom joined them; not that she was indifferent to the fascination of such brilliant society, but there was much work to be done, now that they were not to be bereft of their beloved plants, and she took the opportunity to attend to it while her grandfather was being so pleasantly entertained. Perhaps too, the fact that the visitor seemed indifferent to either her absence or presence made her less anxious to be present. She was not one to thrust herself upon any person's notice. She had not done that when she was a courted heiress, certainly not now, when in the estimation of the world she had fallen from a great height. Had her spirit, been less sweet she might have felt a degree of pique at not being considered the chief attraction in the house, especially to gentlemen from whom she had received homage enough to spoil an ordinary girl. She settled finally down to the theory that Mr. Thornton was a philanthropist, not a wholesale one, but a grand, loving-hearted Christian, doing his Master's will in small things as faithfully as if they were great; and that he considered it his Christian duty probably to extend kindness and good cheer to her grandfather—and that he was only one of many objects of his charity—for of course he must know by this time about their reduced circumstances. She would have enjoyed the sweet savor of his conversation, as did everybody who ever talked with him, but she declared within herself, "He shall never have a shadow of cause to imagine that I appropriate these visits to myself, and so be annoyed and cease to come—that is probably the reason he never inquires for me at the door. I do want him to come, he is such a comfort to Grandpa."