Together | Page 5

express."

He took his place beside the girl, whose color deepened and eyes turned
away,--perhaps annoyed, or pleased?
"That's what you come for, isn't it?" she said, forcing a little joke.
Noticing that the two men did not speak, she added hastily, "Don't you
know Mr. Price, Mr. Vickers Price? Mr. Hollenby."
The newcomer raised his silk hat, sweeping Vickers, who was fanning
himself with his broad-brimmed felt, in a light, critical stare. Then Mr.
Hollenby at once appropriated the young woman's attention, as though
he would indicate that it was for her sake he had taken this long, hot
journey.
* * * * *
There were other little groups at different stages on the hill,--one
gathered about a small, dark-haired woman, whose face burned duskily
in the June sun. She was Aline Goring,--the Eros of that schoolgirl
band at St. Mary's who had come to see their comrade married. And
there was Elsie Beals,--quite elegant, the only daughter of the President
of the A. and P. The Woodyards, Percy and Lancey, classmates of
Vickers at the university, both slim young men, wearing their clothes
carelessly,--clearly not of the Hollenby manner,--had attached
themselves here. Behind them was Nan Lawton, too boisterous even for
the open air. At the head of the procession, now nearly topping the hill
beneath the house, was that silent married couple, the heavy, sober man
and the serene, large-eyed woman, who did not mingle with the others.
He had pointed out to her the amiable Senator and President Beals,
both well-known figures in the railroad world where he worked, far
down, obscurely, as a rate clerk. His wife looked at these two great
ones, who indirectly controlled the petty destiny of the Johnstons, and
squeezed her husband's hand more tightly, expressing thus many mixed
feelings,--content with him, pride and confidence in him, in spite of his
humble position in the race.
"It's just like the Pilgrim's Progress," she said with a little smile,
looking backward at the stream.

"But who is Christian?" the literal husband asked. Her eyes answered
that she knew, but would not tell.
* * * * *
Just as each one had reflected his own emotion at the marriage, so each
one, looking up at the hospitable goal ahead,--that irregular, broad
white house poured over the little Connecticut hilltop,--had his word
about the Colonel's home.
"No wonder they call it the Farm," sneered Nan Lawton to the Senator.
"It's like the dear old Colonel, the new and the old," the Senator
sententiously interpreted.
Beals, overhearing this, added, "It's poor policy to do things that way.
Better to pull the old thing down and go at it afresh,--you save time and
money, and have it right in the end."
"It's been in the family a hundred years or more," some one remarked.
"The Colonel used to mow this field himself, before he took to making
hardware."
"Isabelle will pull it about their ears when she gets the chance," Mrs.
Lawton said. "The present-day young haven't much sentiment for
uncomfortable souvenirs."
Her cousin Margaret was remarking to Vickers, "What a good, homey
sort of place,--like our old Virginia houses,--all but that great barn!"
It was, indeed, as the Senator had said, very like the Colonel, who
could spare neither the old nor the new. It was also like him to give
Grafton a new stone library and church, and piece on rooms here and
there to his own house. In spite of these additions demanded by
comfort there was something in the conglomeration to remind the
Colonel, who had returned to Grafton after tasting strife and success in
the Middle West, of the plain home of his youth.

"The dear old place!" Alice Johnston murmured to her husband. "It was
never more attractive than to-day, as if it knew that it was marrying off
an only daughter." To her, too, the Farm had memories, and no new
villa spread out spaciously in Italian, Tudor, or Classic style could ever
equal this white, four-chimneyed New England mansion.
On the west slope of the hill near the veranda a large tent had been
erected, and into this black-coated waiters were running excitedly to
and fro around a wing of the house which evidently held the servant
quarters. Just beyond the tent a band was playing a loud march. There
was to be dancing on the lawn after the breakfast, and in the evening on
the village green for everybody, and later fireworks. The Colonel had
insisted on the dancing and the fireworks, in spite of Vickers's jeers
about pagan rites and the Fourth of July.
The bride and groom had already taken their places in the broad hall,
which bisected the old house. The guests were to enter from the south
veranda, pass through the hall, and after