And then Louise had felt the quick grasp and release of her hand, and had not realized the heart-beats; and Lewis had shaken hands with his father and his sister Dorothy, and had said—
"Father, this is my wife."
And the premature old man, with the premature gray hairs standing up over his head, had nodded to her, without even a hand-clasp, and said—
"I'm glad you are safe at home. You must be tired out; travelling is worse than ploughing all day. I never could see why folks who hadn't got to do it should take journeys."
And this was the home-coming! Two nights before, they had been in the old home, stopping there over night, after a two weeks' absence in another direction. How the mother had clasped her to her heart and cried over her! How the father had called her his "precious daughter," and wondered, with a quiver in his lips and a tremble in his voice, how they could let her go again! How Estelle—bright, beautiful, foolish Estelle—had hugged and caressed and rejoiced over her darling sister! What a contrast it was! It all came over her just then, standing alone in the centre of that yellow painted floor—the tremendous, the far-reaching, the ever-developing contrast between the home that had vanished from her sight and the new home to which she had come. She felt a strange, choking sensation, as if a hand were grasping at her throat; the dim light in the tallow candle gleamed and divided itself into many sparks, and seemed swinging in space; and but for a strong and resolute determination to do no such thing, the bride would have made her advent into the Morgan household a thing of vivid memory, by fainting away!
"Lewis!" called a soft, timid voice from somewhere in the darkness. Looking out at them from that bedroom door, poor little Nellie, with her shining eyes and her beating heart, could endure it no longer; and although frightened at her boldness, and dipping her yellow head under the sheet the minute the word was out, she had yet spoken that one low, eager word.
"O Nellie!" Lewis had exclaimed. "Are you awake? Louise, come and see Nellie."
Indeed she would; nothing in life looked so inviting to his young wife at that moment as the darkness and comparative solitude of that inner room. But Lewis had seized the tallow candle as he went—Dorothy, meantime, having roused sufficiently to produce another one; and as Louise followed him she caught a glimpse of the shining eyes and the yellow curls. A whole torrent of pent-up longing for home and love and tenderness flowed out in the kisses which were suddenly lavished on astonished little Nellie, as Louise nestled her head in the bed-clothes and gathered the child to her arms.
"She looks like you, Lewis," was the only comment she made; and Lewis laughed and flushed like a girl, and told his wife she was growing alarmingly complimentary; and Nellie looked from one to the other of them with great, earnest, soulful eyes, and whispered to Lewis that she "loved her almost as much as she did him!" with a long-drawn breath on the word "almost" that showed the magnitude of the offering at the shrine of his new wife. On the whole, it was Nellie that sweetened the memory of the home-coming, and stayed the tears that might have wet Louise Morgan's pillow that night.
As for John, he stayed in the barn, as he had planned, until the new-comers were fairly out of sight above stairs.