“The New Year has truly brought me happiness, for my brother is with me safe once more; our armies are fast gaining ground, our victories are more numerous, and hope dawns that the flag of liberty will yet wave triumphantly over a free and happy nation; and I can once more mingle a song and not a sob with the busy hum of my wheel.”
Two years have passed; Yorktown has been fought and won, and Dorris’s hopeful words are verified. The flag of liberty is unfurled over a free and happy nation,—a nation with its history yet before it, with only its darkest and yet most glorious record traced indelibly on the annals of the world. The New Year has come again, and Dorris, with her spinning-wheel, is wondering what it will bring her. The door opens suddenly, and some one announces, “Col. Endicott, Miss Gordon.”
For a moment Dorris loses sight of everything but a tall figure in the quaint Continental uniform, and only hears the old, light tones say, “Will the fair Goddess of Liberty welcome the soldier as he comes back from fighting his own battles, as she bade him?”
And Dorris, with a blush for the memory he recalls, bravely confesses her fault and her gratitude, and ends very humbly, “Can you forgive me, Col. Endicott?” stealing a look up at the grave face.
“Forgive you, dear child! Do you not know that I have loved you all the time? Now that you know I am a little better than you thought me can you trust me for the rest? Can you love me a little, sweet Dorris?”
There was no lightness now, only deep, loving tenderness; and Dorris answered trustingly:—
“I have been waiting for my hero, and I have found him, Keith.”
And there we will leave them, while the dancing fire-light shows us the pretty scene beside Dorris’s dear little spinning-wheel, and the silvery beams of the rising moon bring to Dorris the beginning of a new and happy life with the advent of a new year.
But ah, Great-grandmother Dorris, stately and demure in your lavender brocade, and your feathered and powdered hair, do you know you were not so very unlike the Dorrises of to-day, after all? And they have spinning-wheels, too, with their flax tied with blue ribbons. And think you that these wheels see no romances? Ah, but they can’t tell them, you know, pretty Grandmother Dorris.