“Mamma and Donald? But how did they come together? Where are they? O Nate, I don’t understand!� And Lissa pressed her hand to her heart.
“There, there, dear. Don’t get excited. I’m afraid I’ve told you too suddenly. Your mother stopped with Alice to have me come on and let you know. They’ll be here after a little while. Donald is out tethering the ponies, and waiting, for the same reason.�
“O Nate, now I’m entirely happy!� And Lissa caught up the child and laughed and cried while she kissed it ecstatically.
“Hello, sis! Aren’t you embracing the wrong one? You might save a little for the rest of us.� Lissa looked up to see Donald’s laughing face framed in the doorway. She extended both hands to him. “O Don, I’m so happy, I don’t know whether to laugh or cry!� she gasped, her tears mingling with her smiles.
“Well, Lissa, I don’t actually know which is the more becoming to you—perhaps both. I always did like April weather. You are fully as dazzling as a rainbow now. It was rather bad for us to come and surprise you, that’s a fact; but I knew you wouldn’t mind me, and Nathan tells me you didn’t receive your mother’s letter.�
“No, and I’m glad I didn’t. I could never have waited for her to get here; no, never! I should have started alone across the prairies, horseback, to meet her. But how changed you are, Don. You look so much taller and bigger, and—my!—so much older!�
“Ah, it’s the added wisdom of my college years,� replied Donald with assumed gravity. “That’s what ages a fellow. It’s the Greek and Latin that you see sticking out all over me that has changed me.�
Lissa looked up into the smiling eyes of this big brother and wondered if it was those four years of hard study that had so chiseled and thinned the boyish face of her remembrance.
“I suspect that mustache is responsible for some of the change,� she said aloud.
“So? Shall I shave it off? It’s an outgrowth of calculus.�