“Abundantly; that was one thing I desired to tell you. He has unusual capacity, and is remarkably efficient. I think his future assured. As for me, it is a great satisfaction to know you do not question my sincerity. And now, Miss Avery, I will not detain you longer, and will say good-evening.”
“Good-evening, Colonel Hamilton.”
And so the Colonel went back to his pretty young wife in the farther corner of the room, and Aunt Frances, with a tumult of thoughts in her heart, rejoined the Van Vleets, and was glad to find them making ready to go down to the clumsy barge, which, manned by two of the farm hands, was waiting to carry them home across the moonlit river. How much she had to think over; and what had Colonel Hamilton told her but that he would lose no chance to atone for what his duty, as he understood it, had compelled him to do. But one thing Colonel Hamilton had not told her, but which was very true, nevertheless, and that was, that one of the strongest impulses toward this same atoning had come to him in the form of a call from a very earnest and winsome little maiden one sunny September morning. “Yes, what may it not mean?” thought Aunt Frances, and a hope that she had not dared to cherish for a long, long time shaped itself once more before her. Perhaps it might come about that she should have her home again some day; surely it was not impossible, since Colonel Hamilton himself was enlisted in her favor. And this was the man whom she thought her worst enemy—whom she had said she would go a long way to avoid meeting. Very thankful was she now that the Colonel had given her no opportunity to carry out her intention. So there is this comfort: if some sorry things happened at the Assembly, some other things happened that were not sorry at all.
Meanwhile poor Starlight and Flutters sat shivering on the front porch. Captain Boniface had come home, but had quietly entered the house at the rear, and the children had not heard him.
“Really, I think we had better go in now,” said Flutters, as though he had brought the same inducement to bear upon Starlight several times before.
“You may go if you like,” answered Starlight. “It's different with you, you live here; but you don't catch me going in at a door that's been slammed in my face, unless the some-one who slammed it comes out and gets me.”
So Flutters stretched and yawned and shivered a moment longer, and then decided to quit the dreary scene.
“Now, don't you tell Hazel that I'm out here, Flutters. Promise me.”
“Not if she asks me?”
“No, not if she asks you fifty times.” Starlight was angry, and not without reason, but he did not believe impetuous Hazel would give him another thought, and so he looked about to see how he could most comfortably pass the night on the porch, for he knew nowhere to go at that late hour. Perhaps it was a pity for a fellow to be so proud, but he could not help it. He wondered if other people's pride made the blood rush so hotly through their veins, and made their hearts thump like trip hammers; there was one good thing about it, though: it helped to keep him a little warmer out there in the chill November evening.