Yet he went downstairs softly humming to himself some joyous melody, he knew not what it was. Katherine was in the breakfast room and heard him coming, timing his footsteps to the music his heart was almost whispering on his lips. So when he opened the door he saw her standing expectant of his entrance and he uttered an untranslatable cry of joy. She was standing by the breakfast table making coffee and she said, “Good morning, Harry! Jane is not down yet. Shall I serve you until she comes?”
“Darling!” he said, “I shall walk all day in the clouds if you serve me. Nothing could be more delightful.”
So it fell out that they breakfasted at once, and Love sat down between them. And all that day, Harry ate, and talked, and walked, and did his daily work to the happy, happy song in his heart--the song he had brought back from the Land of Dreams.
“Lord of Light why so much darkness? Bread of Life
“The great fight, the long fight, the fight that must be
IT is not necessary for me to describe the formal introduction of Katherine to London society. A large number of my readers may have a personal experience of that uncertain step, which Longfellow says, the brook takes into the river, affirming also that it is taken “with reluctant feet”; but Longfellow must be accepted with reservations. Most girls have all the pluck and courage necessary for that leap into the dark and Katherine belonged to this larger class. She felt the constraints of the upper social life. She was ready for the event and wished it over.
The squire also wished it over. He could not help an uneasy regret about the days and the money spent in preparing for its few hours of what seemed to him unnecessary entertaining; not even free from the possibility of being rudely broken up--the illuminated house, the adjoining streets filled with vehicles, the glimpses of jewelry and of rich clothing as the guests left their carriages; the sounds of music--the very odors of cooking from the open windows of the kitchens--the calls of footmen--all the stir of revelry and all the paraphernalia of luxury. How would the hungry, angry, starving men gathering all over London take this spectacle? The squire feared there would be some demonstration and if it should be made against his family’s unfeeling extravagance how could he bear it? He knew that Englishmen usually,