Hearts Afire - By J. D. Rawden Page 0,5
“Joanna, my dearie, I'll have a Holland bloater and nae other thing. And I was a proud man when I got the invite to be secretary to the first meeting of the new Caetus. Maybe it is praising green barley to say just yet that it was a wise departure; but I think so, I think so.”
At this point, Charlotte Morgan came into the room; and the elder slightly moved his chair, and said, “Come in, my bonnie lass, and let us have a look at you.” And Charlotte laughingly pushed a stool toward the fire, and sat down between the two men on the hearthstone. She was the daintiest little maiden that ever latched a shoe,—very diminutive, with a complexion like a sea-shell, great brown eyes, and such a quantity of brown hair hair, that it made light of its ribbon snood, and rippled over her brow and slender white neck in bewildering waves. She dearly loved fine clothes; and she had not removed her outer wrap of Indian silk, nor her scarf of French design. And in her hands she held a great mass of lilies of the valley, which she caressed almost as if they were living things.
“Father,” Charlotte said, nestling close to his side, “look at the lilies. How straight they are! How strong! Oh, the white bells full of sweet scent! In them put your face, father. They smell of the spring.” Her fingers could scarcely hold the bunch she had gathered; and she buried her lovely face in them, and then lifted it, with a charming look of delight, and the cries of “Oh, oh, how delicious!”
Long before supper was over, Madam Morgan had discovered that this night Elder Van Heemskirk had a special reason for his call. His talk of Mennon and the Anabaptists and the objectionable Lutherans, she perceived, was all surface talk; and when the meal was finished, and the girls gone to their room, she was not astonished to hear him say, let us light another pipe. I have something to speak. Sit still, good wife, we shall want your word on the matter.”
“On what matter, Elder?”
“A marriage between my son Sir Edward and your daughter Charlotte.”
The words fell with a sharp distinctness, not unkindly, but as if they were more than common words. They were followed by a marked silence, a silence which in no way disturbed Van Heemskirk. He knew his friends well, and therefore he expected it. He puffed his pipe slowly, and glanced at Joris and Lysbet Morgan. The father's face had not moved a muscle; the mother's was like a handsome closed book. She went on with her knitting, and only showed that she had heard the proposal by a small pretense of finding it necessary to count the stitches in the heel she was turning. Still, there had been some faint, evanescent flicker on her face, some droop or lift of the eyelids, which Joris understood; for, after a glance at her, he said slowly, “For Charlotte the marriage would be good, and Lysbet and I would like it. However, we will think a little about it; there is time, and to spare. One should not run on a new road. The first step is what I like to be sure of; as you know, Elder, to the second step it often binds you.—Say what you think, Lysbet.”
“Sir Edward is to my mind a fine choice, when the time comes. But yet the child is still a child. And there is more: she must learn to help her mother about the house before she can manage a house of her own. So in time, I say, it would be a good thing. We have been long good friends.”
“We have been friends for four generations, and we may safely tie the knot tighter now.
“Surely. Well, well, it was about wedding and housekeeping I came to speak, and we'll have it out. The land between this place and my place, on the river-side, is your land, Joris. Give it to Charlotte, and I will build the young things a house; and the furnishing and plenishing we'll share between us.”
“There is more to a wedding than house and land, Elder” Said Lysbet Morgan.
“Vera true, madam. There's the income to meet the outgoing bills. Sir Edward will have a good practice in law, and is like to have better then I did. They'll be comfortable and respectable, madam; but I think well of you for speaking after the