"I don't want to kill anybody," said John, laughing.
"But that is the business you are going to learn, young man." John was silent. The idea of killing anybody!
"Heard from Mrs. Penhallow lately?" asked the doctor.
"No, but from Leila to-day; and, you will be surprised, from Josiah too."
"Is that so?"
"Yes. Give him the two letters, John. Let me have them to-morrow, Doctor.
Good-bye," and they rode on to the mills.
"It is a pity, John, Josiah gave no address," said Penhallow,—"a childlike man, intelligent, and with some underlying temper of the old African barbarian." The summer days ran on with plenty of work for John and without incidents of moment, until the rector went away as was his habit the first of August, more moody than usual. If the rectory were finished, he would go there in September, and Mrs. Ann had written to him about the needed furniture.
On August 20th that lady wrote from Cape May that she must go home, and Leila that her aunt was well but homesick. The Squire, who missed her greatly, unreluctantly yielded, and on August 25th she was met at the station by Penhallow and John. To the surprise of both, she had brought Leila, as her school was not to begin until September 10th.
"My dear James," cried Mrs. Ann, "it is worth while to have been away to learn how good it is to get home again. I thought I would surprise you with Leila." As the Squire kissed her, Leila and the maid came from the car to the platform loaded with bundles.
John stood still. Nature had been busy with her artist-work. A year had gone by—the year of maturing growth of mind and body for a girl nearing sixteen. Unprepared for her change, John felt at once that this was a woman, who quickly smiling gave him a cordial greeting and her hand. "Why, John Penhallow," she said, "what a big boy you are grown!" It was as if an older person had spoken to a younger. A head taller than the little Mrs. Ann, she was in the bloom of maiden loveliness, rosy, joyous, a certain new stateliness in her movements. The gift of grace had been added by the fairy godmother nature.