The Elder was uncomfortable.  He was in a dilemma.  He had not been able to resist buying the clock for Draxy.  He dared not tell her what he had paid for it.  “She’d never let me give her a cent’s worth, I know that well enough.  It would be just like her to make me take it back,” thought he.  Luckily Draxy was too absorbed in her new riches, all the next day, to ask for her accounts, and by the next night the Elder had deliberately resolved to make false returns on his papers as to the price of several articles.  “I’ll tell her all about it one o’ these days when she knows me better,” he comforted himself by thinking; “I never did think Ananias was an out an’ out liar.  It couldn’t be denied that all he did say was true!” and the Elder resolutely and successfully tried to banish the subject from his mind by thinking about Draxy.

The furniture was, much of it, valuable old mahogany, dark in color and quaint in shape.  Draxy could hardly contain herself with delight, as she saw the expression it gave to the rooms; it had cost so little that she ventured to spend a small sum for muslin curtains, new papers, bright chintz, and shelves here and there.  When all was done, she herself was astonished at the result.  The little home was truly lovely.  “Oh, sir, my father has never had a pretty home like this in all his life,” said she to the Elder, who stood in the doorway of the sitting-room looking with half-pained wonder at the transformation.  He felt, rather than saw, how lovely the rooms looked; he could not help being glad to see Draxy so glad; but he felt farther removed from her by this power of hers to create what he could but dimly comprehend.  Already he unconsciously weighed all things in new balances; already he began to have a strange sense of humility in the presence of this woman.

Ten days from the day that Draxy arrived in Clairvend she drove over with the Elder to meet her father and mother at the station.  She had arranged that the Elder should carry her father back in the wagon; she and her mother would go in the stage.  She counted much on the long, pleasant drive through the woods as an opening to the acquaintance between her father and the Elder.  She had been too busy to write any but the briefest letters home, and had said very little about him.  To her last note she had added a post-script,—­

“I am sure you will like Mr. Kinney, father.  He is very kind and very good.  But he is not old as we thought.”

To the Elder she said, as they drove over, “I think you will love my father, sir, and I know you will do him good.  But he will not say much at first; you will have to talk,” and Draxy smiled.  The Elder and she understood each other very well.

“I don’t think there’s much danger o’ my not lovin’ him,” replied the Elder; “by all you tell he must be uncommon lovable.”  Draxy turned on him such a beaming smile that he could not help adding, “an’ I should think his bein’ your father was enough.”