Mrs. Yorke took the hands that trembled in her lap, and gazed into the fair face uplifted to hers. Edith’s cheeks were like crimson roses, her beautiful eyes shone through tears, her lips were parted by the quickened little breaths that told of her quickened heart-beats.
“There is no mistake this time?” Mrs. Yorke asked, smiling. “You say yes with all your heart?”
“Aunt Amy,” Edith exclaimed, “I’m one yes from head to foot, and the gladdest yes that ever was spoken!”
CHAPTER XXXI.
CLARA’S CHAPTER.
The second summer after their return to Boston, Clara went down to spend in Seaton with Hester; and, late in July, the ship Edith Yorke, Captain Cary, came sailing up Seaton River. The captain had made a prosperous voyage to India, and, having nothing else to do just now, had come down to Maine for a load of barrel-staves and boxes. To his mind, the fresh pine and ash made a pleasing contrast to his rich Eastern cargo.
Hester and her husband immediately made him at home with them. Their house was not so full but there was room for him, if he could live in the house with six boys.
“You can, perhaps, bear it better, since they are sure to be very fond of you,” Mrs. Hester said. For the boys had clustered about the sailor before he had been ten minutes with them.
Mrs. Cleaveland was wont to say that the masculine element in hers and her mother’s immediate descendants would be rather overpowering were its members not the salt of the earth.
“Poor little mamma was quite alarmed,” she said. “She protested that, if Melicent’s husband or mine called her mother, she would leave the country. So they are careful how they address her. Now, I am made of sterner stuff, and nothing else makes me so proud as to have all these boys call me mother.”
Hester’s boys presented rather an imposing array. There were Major Cleaveland’s eldest, Charles and Henry, college-students of twenty and twenty-two years of age, healthy, honest lads, not very clever, but full of energy and good sense. They were favorites at college, where the renaissance of muscle had destroyed the old empire of hollow chests and pale cheeks, and established as the watchword mens sana in corpore sano. Next to these was Eugene, now a slender youth of fifteen, cleverer than his brothers, but somewhat effeminate in character.