“No, you’re all right as you are. I’m not sure but you’re improved.�
“O, that morsel of flattery is sweet, at last, and I’ve been fishing for it so long,� said Donald, with an expansive sigh. “I rather expected you to say at once, ‘how much handsomer you’ve grown!’�
“I am very glad I did not say it,� said Lissa, with a grimace. “But I see mamma coming. Excuse me, Donald, I must run to meet her!� and Lissa, with all the abandon of a school-girl, ran down the path to meet the stately mother, whose tears were ready to mingle with those of her beloved child. And when, a few moments later, Lissa came in clinging fondly to the maternal arm, the crimson flush of excited pleasure in her cheeks, the intervening years seemed to have been stricken out and one saw but the girl of sixteen who so trustingly gave her future into Nathan’s care and bade good-by to Donald in his Iowa home.
But there is little Lucy to be shown to grandma, and kissed and commented upon, and the tea is cold, and the cakes in danger of being spoiled before Lissa is recalled to her duties as hostess.
“Ah, Donald, dear, I shall let you all starve, I am sure, before I can bring myself down to such mundane affairs as bread and butter again. How delightful this is. I didn’t know I was homesick before, but now I think I must have been. But how did you happen to be with mother, Don?� she babbled.
“Our meeting was ‘purely accidental,’ as the fiction writers say. I saw her at the station and heard her inquiring for a carriage to bring her out here, and so I made bold to introduce myself. Of course she saw at a glance the honesty in my face, and knew I was a confidence man—�
“Oh, oh!� cried Lissa.
“And I told her I was a poor navigator bound for the same harbor and we set sail together,� Donald concluded.
Mrs. Clyne nodded. “That is true, notwithstanding Mr. Bartram’s rather mixed metaphor,� she said, smiling.
“Ah, how strangely it happened, and fortunately. And now you will spend the winter with us; and you, too, I hope, Donald.�