“I dare say! A man in love does many foolish things!”
The utterance of this great and universal truth had not time to receive comment from Elizabeth before Cuff reappeared, with the stable key; and at the same instant, a rather delicate, inoffensive knock was heard on the front door.
“That must be aunt Sally,” said Elizabeth. 54 “Let her in, Cuff. Then go and stable the horses. My poor Cato will freeze!”
It was indeed Miss Sarah Williams, and in a state of breathlessness. She had been running, perhaps to escape the unseemly embraces of the wind, which had taken great liberties with her skirts,—liberties no less shocking because of the darkness of the evening; for though De la Rochefoucauld has settled it that man’s alleged courage takes a vacation when darkness deprives it of possible witnesses, no one will accuse an elderly maiden’s modesty of a like eclipse.
“My dear child, what could have induced you——” were her first words to Elizabeth; but her attention was at that point distracted by seeing Cuff, outside the threshold, about to pull the door shut. “Don’t close the door yet, boy. Some one is coming.”
Cuff thereupon started on his task of stabling the three horses, leaving the door open. The flame of the candle on the newel post was blown this way and that by the in-rushing wind.
“It’s old Mr. Valentine,” explained Miss Sally to Elizabeth. “He offered to show me over from the parsonage, where he happened to be calling, so I didn’t wait for Mrs. Babcock’s boy——”
“You found Mr. Valentine pleasanter company, I suppose, aunty, dear,” put in Elizabeth, who spared neither age nor dignity. “He’s a widower again, isn’t he?”
Miss Sally blushed most becomingly. Her plump cheeks looked none the worse for this modest suffusion.