"You look jest the same to me,
wife, as ever you did!"
"Do I?" said the pleased wife. "Well, I'm glad I do. I couldn't bear to
seem different to you, Henry!"
Henry took his pipe from his mouth, and then looked at his wife with a
steady and somewhat critical gaze.
"I don't think anything about it, wife; but if I want to think on
't,--why, I can, by jes' shettin' my eyes,--and there you are! as
handsome as a picter! Little Dorcas is the very image of you, at her
age; and you look exactly like her,--only older, of course.--Everything
ready for Thanksgiving? We'll give Day a good dinner, anyhow!"
"Yes, all's ready," answered Dorcas, with her eyes fixed on the fire.
"I knew it! There's no fail to you, wife!--never has been!--never will
be!"
Dorcas rose and went behind her husband, took his head in her two
faithful hands, kissed his forehead, and went upstairs.
"Little Dorcas" was fastening her hair in countless _papillotes_. She
smiled bashfully, as her mother entered the room, and showed her white,
even teeth, between her rosy lips.
"I wonder if I ever did look so pretty as that child does!" said the
mother to herself.
But she said to Dorcas only this:--
"Here's your great-aunt's pin and ring. They used to be mine, when I was
young and foolish. Take care of 'em, and don't you be foolish, child!"
"I wonder what mother meant!" soliloquized the daughter, when her mother
had kissed her and said good-night; "she certainly had tears in her
eyes!"
In the gray dawn of the next morning, Swan Day rode out of Walton in the
same stage-coach and with the same "spike-team" of gray horses which
had brought him thither thirty-six hours before.
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