CHAPTER 29.  MELISSA AND MARGARET

The early spring sunshine lay like a benediction over the Dean household, for Margaret and her mother were home from exile.  On the corner of the veranda sat Mrs. Dean, where she always sat, knitting.  Under the big weeping willow in the garden was her husband’s grave.  When she was not seated near it, she was there in the porch, and to it her eyes seemed always to stray when she lifted them from her work.

The mail had just come and Margaret was reading a letter from Dan, and, as she read, her cheeks flushed.

“He took me into his own tent, mother, and put his own clothes on me and nursed me like a brother.  And now he is going to take me to you and Margaret, he says, and I shall be strong enough, I hope, to start in a week.  I shall be his friend for life.”

Neither mother nor daughter spoke when the girl ceased reading.  Only Margaret rose soon and walked down the gravelled walk to the stile.

Beneath the hill, the creek sparkled.  She could see the very pool where her brothers and the queer little stranger from the mountains were fishing the day he came into her life.  She remembered the indignant heart-beat with which she had heard him call her “little gal,” and she smiled now, but she could recall the very tone of his voice and the steady look in his clear eyes when he offered her the perch he had caught.  Even then his spirit appealed unconsciously to her, when he sturdily refused to go up to the house because her brother was “feelin’ hard towards him.”  How strange and far away all that seemed now!  Up the creek and around the woods she strolled, deep in memories.  For a long while she sat on a stone wall in the sunshine—­thinking and dreaming, and it was growing late when she started back to the house.  At the stile, she turned for a moment to look at the old Buford home across the fields.  As she looked, she saw the pike-gate open and a woman’s figure enter, and she kept her eyes idly upon it as she walked on toward the house.  The woman came slowly and hesitatingly toward the yard.  When she drew nearer, Margaret could see that she wore homespun, home-made shoes, and a poke-bonnet.  On her hands were yarn half-mits, and, as she walked, she pushed her bonnet from her eyes with one hand, first to one side, then to the other—­looking at the locusts planted along the avenue, the cedars in the yard, the sweep of lawn overspread with springing bluegrass.  At the yard gate she stopped, leaning over it—­her eyes fixed on the stately white house, with its mighty pillars.  Margaret was standing on the steps now, motionless and waiting, and, knowing that she was seen, the woman opened the gate and walked up the gravelled path—­never taking her eyes from the figure on the porch.  Straight she walked to the foot of the steps, and there she stopped, and, pushing her bonnet back, she said, simply: 

“Are you Mar-ga-ret?” pronouncing the name slowly and with great distinctness.