Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v109.djvu/27

Rh field; and when her husband came home, she was sitting, pale but placid, in her lilac calico, her gray hair smooth as satin, her foot in the stirrup of her cabbage-netting, and Fuzz purring on the window-sill beside her.

"Ain't ye goin' ter dress up, Emerline?" he asked, querulously.

"What for?" she said, calmly.

"You got a black silk," he said, as if challenging her to deny it, "and a gold chain—"

"I'd look pretty gittin' supper in a silk gownd and a gold chain!"

"You look pretty anyway, Emerline. But w'en we're expectin' company—"

"My daughter ain't company."

"But I wanted to put on my Sunday coat—"

"Do you s'pose Lally thinks of us in our Sunday clo'es, or jes 's we be?"

"But she's ben seein' folks in better 'n our best."

"You go an' wash, father, an' put on a clean shirt, an' slick your hair—"

"W'y, I've ben 'lottin' all day on gittin' into my other thin's, Emerline. I shaved this mornin' a-purpose."

"You ain't much time ter lose, then. I'll be a-settin' the table."

When her husband came back, fresh and rosy with the soap and water and the clean shirt, his coat hanging over his arm, he sat down by the stove dejectedly, while she bustled about, opening the oven door lest the biscuit browned too soon, lifting the griddles to moderate the heat, bringing the lamb and the mint sauce from the pantry, pouring the boiling water off the potatoes and setting them back that they might burst their skins.

"It's dretfle waitin' so," said her husband. And he stretched his arm and took down the accordion from the shelf above—the mother-of-pearl keys always seeming to him things of beauty and part of the melody—and began playing a plaintive "ditty of no tune." Presently he paused. "You know, Emerline," he said, "there was Peters's Aba that come home too high an' mighty fer her folks."

"Lally isn't a Peters."

"No, Lally isn't a Peters," he repeated, as if that were some comfort, and fell to playing softly again. "No, Lally's Lally," he said, pausing again.

"I'm sure I hope so!" cried a gay voice behind him; and two hands were laid upon his eyes. "I give you three guesses who it is, Father James! And the forfeit's kisses!"

"It's my girl! It's my girl!" he cried, upsetting his chair as he sprang to his feet and caught her to himself, the accordion falling forgotten. And the girl, a tall young birch-tree of a girl, couldn't speak for the tears that were half laughing and half crying.

"Oh, I'm so glad to be here again!" she said then, as she broke away from him and ran to her mother. "Oh, mother, everything's just the same! I don't know how many nights I've dreamed about it! Oh, if it hadn't been for the dreams of those nights, I don't know how I could have stayed away!"

"And it's the same little girl, Emerline! Don't you see? You can't grow thorns on an apple-tree!"

"It's the same dear people! Oh, I'm so glad you're my people!" And she threw off her hat and jacket, and had an arm round each of them again.

"We ain't the sort of people you've ben goin' with, Lally," said her father, with a slight relapse into doubt.

"You're a thousand times better! There's nobody like you!" And she kissed the tear off his face. "Oh, here's dear old Fuzz! He remembers me—I really think he does—after all these years! And the old clock's ticking just the same! Wait till I run up to my room, and I'll help you get tea, mother."

"I set some white laylocks there," said her father, when she was gone. "I thought 'twould make it seem brighter like. She's ben havin' thin's nice." And then he added, anxiously, "You don't s'pose she's puttin' anythin' on, do you, mother?"

"Mr. James, you do beat all! Goin' about lookin' for trouble. Can you see that face an' think she's makin' b'lieve? Puttin' thin's on! Now we'll dish up 'fore she's back,—she's gotter explore every corner of the garret fust,—and I'll blow the horn jes 's I useter w'en she was clown to the medder lot. We've got our child back, father!"

"Wal, p'r'aps we hev. I guess we hev. You do find a way of makin' thin's comfortable, mother. I s'pose I'd better put my coat on 'fore we sit?"