Aunt Maria had put the hot, tempting dishes before him and gone away. The pot of coffee was steaming at his side. Suddenly an impulse, half sentimental, came over him which he could not resist. He recalled how his father had always said grace; and, bowing his head, he whispered the long-silent words over his unturned plate and folded napkin. How odd! he thought: it was as if the short prayer had been laid upon his lips by the spirit of his father; the fervent "Amen" seemed to be echoed by his mother's voice from the opposite end of the board. Saunders's soul was suddenly filled with a transcendent ecstasy. His parents seemed to be actually present, invisible, and yet flooding his being with their spiritual essence.
"Surely," he said, the wonder of the thing bursting upon him like ineffable light, "there is 'a peace which passeth understanding.'"
After breakfast he went to the front veranda to smoke. He saw Tom Drake walking across a meadow to some drainage ditches which were being dug to destroy some objectionable marshes. The results of the man's work as manager had been more than satisfactory.
Presently Saunders descried a few hundred yards down the main road a woman on a horse. It was Dolly Drake; and, throbbing with delight, he hastened down to the gate, thinking that she might be coming to speak to her father, and would need assistance in alighting. But she had no intention of stopping, and with a merry bow was about to ride by when he stepped out and playfully held up his hands.
"Your money or your life!" he cried.
She reined the spirited young black horse in and sat jauntily on the side-saddle. Her color was high; she wore a pretty riding-hat, a close-fitting gray habit, and her eyes were sparkling from the exhilaration of the gallop along the level road.
"Take my life, but for Heaven's sake spare my money!" she retorted, with an ironical laugh.
"I think I have some news for you," he said, approaching and testing the girth of her saddle. "Sit still and let me draw it tighter."
"News," she said, with the eagerness of a child, as he pulled upward on the strap, "for me?"
"Yes, for you. I knew you would be interested in the bill before the House and Senate, and so I asked the Governor to write me if it went through."