ncertainty, for they could not tell when Pitt might be
with them. It lasted, this time of anxiety, till Seaforth had been in
its full summer dress for some weeks; and it was near the end of a fair
warm day in July that he at last came. The table was set for tea, and
the master and mistress of the house were seated in their places on
either side the fireplace, where now instead of a fire there was a huge
jar full of hemlock branches. The slant sunbeams were stretching across
the village street, making that peaceful alternation of broad light and
still shadows which is so reposeful to the eye that looks upon it. Then
Mrs. Dallas's eye, which was not equally reposeful, saw a buggy drive
up and stop before the gate, and her worsteds fell from her hands and
her lap as she rose.

'Husband, he is come' she said, with the quietness of intensity; and
the next moment Pitt was there.

Yes, he had grown to be a man; he was changed; there was the conscious
gravity of a man in his look and bearing; the cool collectedness that
belongs to maturer years; the traces of thought and the lines of
purpose. It had been all more or less to be seen in her boy before, but
now the mother confessed to herself the growth and increase of every
manly and promising trait in the face and figure she loved. That is, as
soon as the first rush of delight had had its due expression, and the
first broken and scattering words were spoken, and the three sat down
to look at each other. The mother watched the broad brow, which was
whiter than it used to be; the fine shoulders, which were even
straighter and broader than of old; and the father noticed that his son
overtopped him. And Mrs. Dallas's eyes shone with an incipient moisture
which betrayed a soft mood she had to combat with; for she was not a
woman who liked sentimental scenes; while in her husband's grey orbs
there flashed out every now and then a fire of satisfied pride, which
was touching in one whose face rarely betrayed feeling of any kind.
Pitt was just the fellow he had hoped to see him; and Oxford had been
just the right place to send him to. He said little; it was the other
two who did most of the talking. The talking itself for some time was
of that disjointed, insignificant character which is all that can get
out when minds are so full, and enough when hearts are so happy.
Indeed, for all that evening they could not advance much further. Eyes
supplemented tongues sufficiently. It was not til