“He is not quite like us,” Mrs. Yorke said, “but he is more natural and original, and is, altogether, a remarkable young man. Edith has reason to be proud of his homage. He certainly behaves exquisitely toward her.”
Mr. Yorke, refusing to be influenced by feminine raptures, was fain to take the young man out of the house, in order to talk with him uninterruptedly. He displayed the improvements he had made in the place, his avenues, now as hard as cement, his terraces, smooth and green with turf of velvet fineness. There were vines here and there, disposed for effect, like drapery in an artist’s studio, and many a flower which bloomed now for the first time under Seaton skies. They stopped at last beside a clover-plot, thick with crowded trefoils and blossoms. Its surface was unsteady with bees, musical with a low hum, and all the air was sweet with the breath of it.
“If I were not disgusted with Seaton,” Mr. Yorke said, “I should like to spend my summers here, and carry out my plans for the place; but when we go away, probably in October, I shall never wish to see the town again. There is no security here.”
Dick leaned thoughtfully on the fence, and watched the bees come and go over the clover, and took off
his hat to shake his hair loose in that fragrant air. “I think, sir, that Seaton may be in future all the better for this trouble,” he said slowly. “The tone of the place is low, I know that well, but it is in a fair way of becoming ashamed of itself, and so, of mending. When people have wrong ideas, and stand by them stubbornly, I like to have them go on, and find out for themselves what their principles lead to. Conviction reaches them then through their own experience, and so you hear no more about the matter. It is, of course, a slow way, but it is sure.”
Mr. Yorke made a grimace, and quoted President Mann: “God Almighty is not in a hurry, and I am.”
Carl had gone to Bragon. He went quite unexpectedly, the day Dick Rowan came, and did not see Edith’s lover till he had been a week in Seaton. He came home one evening after tea, when the young people were in the cupola, looking down the bay, for the Halcyon. They waved their handkerchiefs to him, and his mother ran out to meet him.
“My dear son!” she exclaimed, embracing him as joyfully as if he had been gone a year. “I would not watch for you, lest I should be disappointed. I pretended I did not expect you. But you may know what a hypocritical pretence it was when I say that your supper is all ready, though, to be sure, breakfast, dinner, and supper have been kept for you every day.”
While speaking, she led him into a little northern parlor, which was their summer dining-room.
Carl looked at his mother with a smile, but tears rose to his eyes. He was not one to take even a mother’s devotion as a matter of course, and just now he found it peculiarly touching.