CHAPTER XXII
ABOUT this time Paul paid his first visit to the attractive cottage now occupied by Warren and his wife and sister-in-law. As he entered at the front door he saw his mother in the meadow some distance from the house. Amanda was dusting the new furniture in the little parlor, and, seeing him, she came forward with a flushed, pleased look on her round face.
“Oh, we have got things to goin' scrumptious!” she laughed, as she grasped his hand and drew him into the parlor. “Paul, it's a regular palace. The day the furniture come we all worked till away after dark gettin' things straight. That's the best cook-stove I ever saw, an' you sent enough groceries to last a month. I made your ma go to town an' buy the clothes she needed, too. The storekeeper said the more we ordered the better it would please him, for thar wasn't no limit to your credit. Oh, Paul, I wish I could think it was right.”
“But it is right,” he smiled, reassuringly. “It is right because it makes me happy to be able to do it.”
“That's what Ethel Mayfield said—”
“Ethel!” he broke in, his smile subsiding. “Have you seen her? Has she—”
“Oh, yes, she was over yesterday. Paul, she's awfully nice. I don't know when I have ever seen a nicer young lady. She ain't one bit stuck up. She was passin' along by the gate an' stopped an' introduced herself to me an' Addie. She offered to come in an' help fix up the house, said she'd love to the best in the world, but we wouldn't let 'er.”
“And you say that she said—” Paul began, tensely, “that she said I—”
“Yes; you see, your ma begun sayin' that she couldn't feel right about lettin' you do so much for us after all that's passed, and you know how Addie is—she set in to cry. That's when I discovered Ethel Mayfield's woman-heart. She choked up 'erself, an' put 'er arm round your ma in the tenderest way, and said—Paul, she said you was the best young man the sun ever shone on. You never heard the like since you was born. It looked like nothin' would stop 'er. The more she went on the more your ma cried, an' that started me, an' we was the silliest bunch o' blubberers you ever saw—wet every rag in sight. I had to change my apron. Ethel said you'd made a different sort o' creature of her from what she used to be. She declared she seed all things with a clearer sight—that thar wasn't any human difficulty you couldn't surmount. She told your ma that she knowed it was a regular joy to you to help 'er, an' that she must let you do it. I declare that girl looked like—I don't know what she did look like. She was as nigh an angel as any human I ever met. Her face was as tender as a rose an' her eyes was fairly streamin' with inside light. She kept takin' your ma by the hands an' pettin' 'er, an' tellin' 'er she was pretty. She told us how nigh distracted she'd been over her cousin's death, an' how you'd turned her sorrow into comfort by the beautiful way you looked at it.”
“She is very kind,” Paul said. “Is my mother coming in?”