"Yes, my sight is getting better—I can see the stars now," he said smiling.
"Ah! John, you have long seen the stars," I said.
So, as soon as I could travel, John Marvel sent me off—sent me to a farmhouse where he had lived in his first parish—a place far from the railroads; a country of woods and rolling fields and running streams; the real country where blossoms whiten and birds sing and waters murmur.
"They are the best people in the world," he said; and they were. They accepted me on his word. "Mr. Marvel had sent me, and that was enough." His word was a talisman in all that region. They did not know who the Queen of England was, and were scarcely sure as to the President of the United States; but they knew John Marvel. And because I had come from him they treated me like a prince. And this was the man I had had the folly to look down on!
In that quiet place I seemed to have reached content. In that land of peace the strife of the city, the noise and turmoil and horror of the strike, seemed but as the rumble of waves breaking on some far-off shore. I began to quaff new life with the first breath of the balmy air.
The day after I arrived I borrowed the skiff that belonged to my host and paddled down the little river that skirted his place, with the idea of fishing in a pool he had told me of.
The afternoon was so soft and balmy that I forgot my sport and simply drifted with the current under the overhanging branches of willows and sycamores, when, turning a bend in the stream, I came on a boat floating in a placid pool. In it were a young lady and a little girl, and who but Dix, his brindled head held high, his twisted ears pointed straight up-stream, and his whole body writhing and quivering with excitement. It was a moment before I could quite take it in, and I felt for a second as if I were dreaming.
Yet there was Eleanor Leigh under the willows, her small white hand resting on the side of the boat, her face lovelier than ever, and her voice making music in my ears with those low, sincere tones that I had never forgotten, and which made it the most beautiful in the world. I must have carried my soul in my eyes that moment; for the color sprang to her cheeks and I saw a look in hers I had never seen there before.
"Well, this is Fate," I said, as the current bore my boat against hers and it lay locked against it in that limpid pool.
"Would Mr. Marvel have called it so?" she asked, her eyes resting upon me with a softer look in them than they had ever given me.