“I know I’m not good enough for him,” said Alice, meekly. “But I am going to try to be, and learn just how a minister’s wife ought to behave.”
“A minister’s wife!” gasped Octavia and Estelle in chorus.
But I, who am not the quick-witted one of the family, I sprang up and hugged her.
Estelle collapsed on a hassock.
“You no-end-of-a-humbug, we thought it was Dave,” she cried.
“That boy!” exclaimed Alice Yorke, who was herself nearly two years younger than the boy. “Cyrus thought so, and I—I had almost to ask him to have me!”
“If you have broken Dave’s heart you shall answer for it to me!” said Estelle. But she laughed. She evidently shared my opinion, that Dave’s heart was not very brittle.
Nevertheless, to this day I am not sure about it!
With all these gleams of sunshine the dreaded day of the auction sale came steadily on, and poor Cy’s happiness only showed itself occasionally in a flash of light across his worn face. I knew that he reproached himself for thinking of any happiness of his own at such a time.
On the very day before that appointed for the auction, Cyrus received a telegram from Dave, from whom no one had been able to hear a word for more than a fortnight.