Page:Lippincotts Monthly Magazine-40.djvu/87

Rh in the enterprise of getting a resident clergyman, as well as the most liberal contributor to the church that was soon to be erected near the site of the old school-house. So Stella mused in her heart with thankful joy on the happy change in Unc., and loved to think it had a spiritual no less than a mental and a moral side.

"Have we kept you waiting, Unc.?" she said, brightly, as she sprang to the ground, supported by his strong hand. "Tea will be ready very soon, and I'll promise you an extra good one to-night, to reward your patience."

The little cap and whip and gloves were thrown aside, and Stella, still in her short habit, flitted about the cosey dining-room, assisting and supervising her rather inefficient little waitress, while the two men, in the deepening twilight, sat on the porch and watched her moving here and there, in the light, within the room. Her hair, rougher than usual from the contact of her cap, stood out lightly around the outline of her head, and the light from the lamp shone through it in a way that suggested to her husband the idea of a nimbus. It was too foolish a thought to be uttered, and he kept it to himself, but the suggestion was due perhaps more to the prompting of his heart than to his vision; for to him this radiant, pure, and lovely being seemed to partake of the nature of angels more than of men. None but a human being, however, could have brewed such a cup of tea, and ordered and administered such an appetizing little supper, as she presently summoned them to partake of. When it was over, and the busy housekeeper's duties were done for the night, and Unc. had gone off to have a quiet smoke by himself, Stella came out to her husband in the porch. He threw his cigar away and rose as she approached him. The night was a lovely one, and the tranquil scene stretched out before them was bathed in a flood of moonlight. They had a fashion, at such times as these, of pacing up and down together as they talked, and now Hobart put his arm about her waist, and up and down, up and down, they walked, from one end to the other of the long porch, talking in tender low-toned words of all the quiet, humdrum interests of their simple lives. But the love that burned within their hearts made glorious to them every common thing, and lifted the every-day trivialities of life into the regions of high thinking which in this instance, as in so many others, went hand in hand with plain living.

"I expected so much in my married life," said Hobart, as they paused at one end of the porch, leaning against the railing and looking out across the lovely moonlighted fields, "that almost any one would have told me I would have to be in some measure disappointed. It would have made no difference; for, in spite of all, I should have