Marley heard on Monday evening that Judge Blair had gone to Cincinnati, and the news filled him with a high if somewhat culpable joy. He found Lavinia and her mother on the veranda, and Lavinia said, with a grave simplicity:

“Mama, this is Glenn.”

“I’m very glad to have you come,” said Mrs. Blair, trying instantly to rob the situation of the embarrassment she felt it must have for the young man.

Marley could not say a word, but he put all his gratitude in the pressure he gave Mrs. Blair’s hand. The light that came from the hall was dim, and though Mrs. Blair could see that Marley was straight and carried himself well, his face was blurred by the shadows. She turned to Lavinia.

“Will you bring out another chair, dear, or would you prefer to go indoors?”

Then, seeing an advantage in this latter alternative, she decided for them:

“Perhaps we’d better go in, I fear it’s cool out here.”

She held back the screen door and Lavinia whisked excitedly into the hall. Mrs. Blair led the way to the parlor and sent Lavinia for a match. Then, turning to Marley, waiting there in the darkness, she said:

“She has told me, Glenn.”

Marley felt something tender, maternal in her voice; the way she spoke his name affected him.

“But she is young, very young; she is just a girl. We wish, of course, for nothing but her happiness, and you must be patient, very patient. It must not be, if it is to be, for a long time. What does your own mother think of it?”

“I haven’t told her.”

“You haven’t!”

“No. I felt I hardly had the right yet—not before I spoke to Judge Blair, you know. I think I shall speak to him just as soon as he gets home.” He spoke impulsively; until that moment he had been thrusting the thought from him, but Mrs. Blair’s manner led him into confidences. In the immediate fear that he had been precipitant, he looked to her for help; she seemed the sort of woman to wish to save others all the trouble she could, one whose life was full of sacrifices, none the less noble, perhaps, because she made so little of them herself. But a perplexity showed in her eyes and before she could reply, Lavinia was back. With an intimate, domestic impulse Lavinia pressed the match into Marley’s hand, and said:

“You do it; I can’t reach.”

Marley groped with his upheld hand, and when Lavinia guided him to the middle of the room, he lighted the gas. Mrs. Blair looked at him for a moment and Lavinia, standing by, as if awaiting her decision, glowed with happiness. Mrs. Blair’s smile completed the fond, maternal impression Marley had somehow felt when she was standing by him in the darkness. Her full matronly figure, even in the tendency to corpulence of her middle years, had preserved its graceful lines; and Marley regretted the disappearance of this wholesome, cheerful woman as she passed out of the room.

Judge Blair got home from Cincinnati on Sunday morning, worn by his work, and maddened by the din of the city to which he was so unaccustomed. Walking up the familiar streets, he had been glad of their shade and that pervading sense of a Sunday that still remains a Sabbath in Macochee. He had been a little piqued, at first, because his wife had not met him at the train, though she had not, to be sure, known that he was coming. She had gone to Sunday-school, and Connie gave him his breakfast—that is, she sat at the table with him, watching him eat and answering the questions he put to her about the happenings in Macochee while he had been away.

It was not strange that Connie should talk mostly, after she yielded to the gnawing temptation to tell him at all, of the nightly visits Marley had made to the house. She did this in a certain resentment she felt with Lavinia, a resentment that came from an annoying jealousy she was beginning to have of Marley, as if, in installing himself in her sister’s heart, he had evicted all other affections from it.

The judge, with his constant affectation of what he considered the judicial attitude of mind, tried to weigh Connie’s somewhat prejudiced evidence impartially, but he was troubled and annoyed that the peace he had been looking forward to all the week should be jeopardized immediately on his coming home.

It was not until afternoon that he had an opportunity to question his wife, and he began with a severity in his attitude that had as its fundamental cause, as much as anything else, her failure to meet him at the train that morning, and her remaining to church after Sunday-school.

“What do you know about this business between Lavinia and that young Marley?” he asked. “It seems to have developed rapidly during my absence.”

“Oh, Connie has been talking to you, I suppose!” laughed Mrs. Blair. “You know that Connie is apt to be sensational.”

Judge Blair eyed his wife narrowly. Connie was his favorite child, though he would not, of course, admit as much, and he was ever ready to spring to her defense.

“She has very bright eyes,” he said.

“Oh, now, dear,” said Mrs. Blair, “don’t overestimate this thing. Lavinia’s nothing but a child.”

“That’s just the point. Has the young man been here much?”

“Yes, he was here quite often—several evenings, in fact.”

“Humph! He seems to have taken advantage of the sunshine of my absence to make his hay.”

“Don’t do him an injustice. He didn’t meet Lavinia until just about the time you went away.”

“Well, we’ll see about it,” said the judge, darkly.

“Now see here, Will, don’t make the matter serious by an unnecessary opposition; don’t drive the children into a position where they will consider themselves persecuted lovers.”

Mrs. Blair had not until that instant thought of this argument, and she was so pleased with it, as justifying her own course with the children, as she had artfully called them, that she pressed it.

“No, don’t do that. Just let them alone. They’re as likely as not to outgrow it; that is, if there is anything between them to outgrow. They’ll probably imagine themselves in love a dozen times before either of them is married.”

“Don’t talk of marriage!” said the judge, with a little shudder.

Mrs. Blair, who had so well dispelled her own fears, could laugh at her husband’s.

“Just let them alone,” she said; “or leave it to me.”

“Yes,” said the judge peevishly, “leave it to you. You’d probably aid and abet them.” And then, instantly regretting his ill humor, he added hastily: “You’re so kind-hearted.”

Mrs. Blair kissed his white hair gently and gave his cheek a little pat.

“You’d better take a nap,” she said.