Page:While Caroline Was Growing.djvu/201

 and the Lord knows they eat me out of house and home."

The young man, indeed, ate voraciously, and under Luella's kindly domineering the hostess herself cleared her plate. The hot coffee brought the color to her cheeks, and she had even smiled at Henry D. Thoreau. Caroline had never seen anyone prettier. She had a great dimple in either cheek, and her gray eyes smiled with the sweetest confidence into the black eyes opposite: any one could see that they loved each other very much, even if they had "had words."

"Just a little more o' the huckleberry bread, dear?" Luella urged her. "I've been sort o' plannin' out how I c'd manage to get here every day, and I guess I can, if you'll be content to wait a little for your breakfast. My old gentleman don't have anything but a cup o' coffee in the morning, an' I c'd be over here by ha' past eight, easy enough, Mr. Hartley, if that suited you—"

"Wortley, my name is Wortley," the young man interrupted, hastily.

Luella looked puzzled.

"Wortley?" she repeated, "why, that's—