Before Christie could get her breath after that somewhat startling announcement, Mr. Power appeared, took in the situation at a glance, gave them a smile that was a benediction, and said heartily as he offered a hand to each: 

“Now I’m satisfied; I’ve watched and waited patiently, and after many tribulations you have found each other in good time;” then with a meaning look at Christie he added slyly:  “But David is ‘no hero’ you know.”

She remembered the chat in the strawberry bed, laughed, and colored brightly, as she answered with her hand trustfully in David’s, her eyes full of loving pride and reverence lifted to his face: 

“I’ve seen both sides of the medal now, and found it ’sterling gold.’  Hero or not I’m content; for, though he ’loves his mother much,’ there is room in his heart for me too; his ‘old books’ have given him something better than learning, and he has convinced me that ‘double flowers’ are loveliest and best.”

CHAPTER XVI.

Mustered in.

Christie’s return was a very happy one, and could not well be otherwise with a mother, sister, and lover to welcome her back.  Her meeting with Letty was indescribably tender, and the days that followed were pretty equally divided between her and her brother, in nursing the one and loving the other.  There was no cloud now in Christie’s sky, and all the world seemed in bloom.  But even while she enjoyed every hour of life, and begrudged the time given to sleep, she felt as if the dream was too beautiful to last, and often said: 

“Something will happen:  such perfect happiness is not possible in this world.”

“Then let us make the most of it,” David would reply, wisely bent on getting his honey while he could, and not borrowing trouble for the morrow.

So Christie turned a deaf ear to her “prophetic soul,” and gave herself up to the blissful holiday that had come at last.  Even while March winds were howling outside, she blissfully “poked in the dirt” with David in the green-house, put up the curly lock as often as she liked, and told him she loved him a dozen times a day, not in words, but in silent ways, that touched him to the heart, and made his future look so bright he hardly dared believe in it.

A happier man it would have been difficult to find just then; all his burdens seemed to have fallen off, and his spirits rose again with an elasticity which surprised even those who knew him best.  Christie often stopped to watch and wonder if the blithe young man who went whistling and singing about the house, often stopping to kiss somebody, to joke, or to exclaim with a beaming face like a child at a party:  “Isn’t every thing beautiful?” could be the sober, steady David, who used to plod to and fro with his shoulders a little bent, and the absent look in his eyes that told of thoughts above or beyond the daily task.