He could include for her an
interest in her own father's coal lands that he meant to buy, and
she could think that it was her own money that she was using. So,
with a sudden rush of gladness from his brain to his heart, he
recklessly yoked himself, then and there, under all responsibility
for that young life and the eager, sensitive soul that already
lighted it so radiantly.
And June? Her nature had opened precisely as had bud and flower
that spring. The Mother of Magicians had touched her as
impartially as she had touched them with fairy wand, and as
unconsciously the little girl had answered as a young dove to any
cooing mate. With this Hale did not reckon, and this June could
not know. For a while, that night, she lay in a delicious tremor,
listening to the bird-like chorus of the little frogs in the
marsh, the booming of the big ones in the mill-pond, the water
pouring over the dam with the sound of a low wind, and, as had all
the sleeping things of the earth about her, she, too, sank to
happy sleep.
XVI
The in-sweep of the outside world was broadening its current now.
The improvement company had been formed to encourage the growth of
the town.
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