He heard the little girl screaming: “Oh, Uncle Joe! Oh, Uncle Joe! Here we are!”
Cherry rattled the buckboard down to the bottom of the hollow and stopped. There was some smoke here, but not much. The man leaped to the ground when he saw a figure rise up from the foot of a tree by the spring—a figure in brown.
“Joseph! Thank God!” murmured Amanda.
The hardware dealer strode to her. She had put out both her hands to him, and he saw that they were trembling, and that tears filled her great brown eyes.
“Oh, Joe!” she said, “I feared you would come too late!”
“But I’m here, Mandy, and I’m not too late!” he cried; and, somehow—neither of them could, perhaps, have explained just how—his arms went around her and her hands rested on his shoulders, while she looked earnestly into his face.
“Oh, Joe! Joe!” It was like a surrendering sob.
“It’s not too late, is it, Mandy? Say it isn’t too late!” he pleaded.
“No, it’s not too late,” she whispered. “If—if we’re not too old.”
“Old!” almost shouted Joseph Stagg. “I don’t remember of ever feeling so young as I do right now!” and suddenly he stooped and kissed her. “Bless me! what fools we’ve been all this time!”