“Jacob served seven for Rachel,” answered Miss Lucretia; “that period is scarcely too short to test a man, and you are both young.”
“No,” said Cynthia, “I cannot marry him, Miss Lucretia. The world would accuse me of design, and I feel that I should not be happy. I am sure that he would never reproach me, even if things went wrong, but—the day might come when—when he would wish that it had been otherwise.”
Miss Lucretia kissed her.
“You are very young, my dear,” she repeated, “and none of us may say what changes time may bring forth. And now I must go.”
Cynthia insisted upon walking with her friend down the street to the hotel—an undertaking that was without danger in Brampton. And it was only a step, after all. A late moon floated in the sky, throwing in relief the shadow of the Worthington mansion against the white patches of snow. A light was still burning in the library.
The next morning after breakfast Miss Lucretia appeared at the little house, and informed Cynthia that she would walk to school with her.
“But I have not yet been notified by the Committee,” said Cynthia. There was a knock at the door, and in walked Judge Ezra Graves. Miss Lucretia may have blushed, but it is certain that Cynthia did. Never had she seen the judge so spick and span, and he wore the broadcloth coat he usually reserved for Sundays. He paused at the threshold, with his hand on his Adam's apple.
“Good morning, ladies,” he said, and looked shyly at Miss Lucretia and cleared his throat, and spoke with the elaborate decorum he used on occasions, “Miss Penniman, I wish to thank you again for your noble action of last evening.”
“Don't 'Miss Penniman' me, Ezra Graves,” retorted Miss Lucretia; “the only noble action I know of was poor Jonathan Hill's—unless it was paying for the gas.”
This was the way in which Miss Lucretia treated her lover after thirty years! Cynthia thought of what the lady had said to her a few hours since, by this very fire, and began to believe she must have dreamed it. Fires look very differently at night—and sometimes burn brighter then. The judge parted his coat tails, and seated himself on the wooden edge of a cane-bottomed chair.