"The New Jerusalem comes down. Adorned With shining grace."
The host and his visitor launched into a tide of talk immediately after breakfast. They had so many things in common to talk over that there seemed to be no end. So occupied was Mr. Monteith with the father that he seemed to bestow very little attention on the daughter; on the contrary, no word or look of hers escaped him.
At one time the perilous walk of yesterday was the subject of conversation, and Mr. Winters was again expressing his gratitude. "So strange," he remarked, "that you should have been coming this way. How did you happen to start out in such a storm?"
Mr. Monteith did not like to talk upon that subject; he murmured something about "business," while a slight flush tinged his cheeks, and at once asked Mr. Winters "what effect he supposed the resumption of specie payment would have upon the state of the country," and the unsuspecting old gentleman was ready to enter with avidity upon the discussion of that subject.
The Christmas dinner duly disposed of, Edna opened the piano, and Mr. Monteith delighted the old people by joining his exquisite tenor to Edna's voice in some old hymns. Mr. Winters called for his favourites, "St. Martins," "Golden Hill," "Exhortation," and listened with tears in his eyes at their faithful rendering, even essaying to put in a few notes of bass himself among the quavers of old St. Martins.
Not until the shadows began to steal into the room did Mr. Monteith take his departure, much to his own regret as well as that of his entertainers, with many promises of future visits.
A few days after Christmas the stage-driver left at the door a small box marked "Samuel Winters." The old gentleman put on his glasses and opened it with much curiosity. Behold, there lay a lovely bouquet of roses, carnations, and violets. He lifted it with care, and a card marked "Hugh Monteith" fell from it. "That is odd," he said, with a roguish look at Edna, "to send these things to me; they are pretty, though, I declare," and he buried his face in a fragrant rose, then involuntarily hummed--
"How sweet the breath beneath the hill. Of Sharon's dewy rose."
Another prolonged inhalation and he called, "Mother, come here and smell this pink; it's the very one that my mother used to border her flowerbeds with when I was a boy." Then he gave the bouquet into Edna's care while he went off, in imagination, into his mother's garden, tied up the sweet peas and trained the morning-glories once again. How each flower, like a dear human face, stood before him looking into his eyes. The damask roses, the Johnny-jump-ups, larkspur, bachelor-buttons, ragged ladies, marigolds, hollyhocks, and a host of others that are out of fashion now. That bouquet furnished him a pleasant reverie for an hour. It brought no less pleasure to Edna. Their new friend had not forgotten them, and her intuitions told her for whom the lovely blossoms were intended.