Before noon we were all at Proudfit House—to which I had taken care to leave word for Abel to follow me—and we were letting in the sun, making ready the table, filling the vases with garden roses; and in the library Calliope laid a fire "in case they get chilly, travellin' so," she said, but I think rather it was in longing somehow to summon a secret agency to that place where Linda Proudfit's portrait hung. For we had long been agreed that, as soon as she was at home again, Linda's mother must be told all that we knew of Linda. Thus, to Calliope and me, the time held a tragic meaning beneath the exterior of our simple cheer. But the time held many meanings, as a time will hold them; and the Voice of its new meaning said to me, as we all waited on the Proudfit veranda with its vines and its climbing rose and its canaries:—
"I marvel, I marvel at your bad taste. How can you leave the dear place and the dear people for me?"
I love to recall the bustle of that arriving and how, as the motor came up the drive, Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss and Mis' Amanda ran down on the gravel and waved their aprons; and how Mis' Postmaster Sykes and Mis' Mayor Uppers and Mis' Photographer Sturgis, having heard the machine pass their doors, had issued forth and followed it and arrived at the Proudfits' with:
"I was right in the midst of a basque, cuttin' over an old lining, but I told Liddy Ember: 'You rip on. I've got to run over.' Excuse my looks. Well said! Back!"
And, "Got here, did you? My, my, all tired out, I expect. Well, mebbe you think we won't feel relieved to see the house open again an' folks in it flyin' round. An' you look as natural as the first thunder-storm in the spring o' the year!"
And, "Every day for two weeks," Mis' Sturgis said, "I've said to Jimmy: 'Proudfits back?' 'No, sir,' s'he, 'not back yet.' An' so it went. Could you sleep any on the sleeper?"
Then Calliope and Mis' Toplady and Mis' Holcomb and the three newcomers hurried all but abreast to the kitchen to "see what they could find"; and when Mis' Proudfit and Miss Clementina and Delia More had taken their places at the burdened table, we all sat about the edge of the room—no one would share in the feast, every one having to "get right back"—and asked of the journey, and gave news of Friendship Village in the long absence. I love to remember it all, but I think that I love best to remember their delicate acceptance of what that day had brought to me. Of this no one said a word, nor did they ask me anything, or seem to observe, far less to wonder. But when they passed me, one and another and another squeezed my hand or patted my arm or gave me their unwonted "dear."
"What gentlefolk they are," my stranger said.
"Noon lunch" was finished, and I had seen Calliope go with Madame Proudfit to the library and close the door, and we were all gathered in the hall, where Miss Clementina had opened a trunk and was showing us some pretty things, when some one else crossed the veranda and appeared in the doorway. And there was Abel, come with my wild roses.
I do not think, however, that it can have occurred to Abel that I was in the room. Nor that any of the others were there, intent on the pretty things of Miss Clementina's trunk. But, his face shining, he went straight to Delia More; and he laid my roses in her arms, looking at her the while with a look which was like a passionate recognition of one not met for many years.