Lucretia hadn't. If they weren't already there I'd bid them both 'go to
Halifax' as I used to be bidden when I was a naughty little girl and
plagued my nurse. She makes a great ado about Dorothy's 'unhappiness.' I
can't believe that. I never, never saw a happier child in all my life.
The idea! Lucretia is just as simple as she was always. She's set out to
find who Dorothy's parents are or were and she thinks she's found. The
idea! The impertinent minx!"

The "Learned Blacksmith" did not reply, but calmly perused his own
paper. He was a blacksmith transformed, and he seemed to fit into this
environment as readily and completely as he had fitted the simple life
of the old smithy under the Great Balm tree. He had recovered his health
but was sojourning for a little time in this old resort of his youth,
meeting those who were lads and maidens then but now as venerable as
himself. Few among them were as alert, as vigorous and as young of heart
as Cousin Betty and himself; and they two had, as a younger guest
remarked: "Been having the time of their lives. Why, that black-eyed old
lady has more attention this day than any of us girls; and as for wit
and repartee, there isn't her equal this year at our Springs."

After a few moments of this silence, during which Mrs. Calvert tapped
her white slipper impatiently, she interrupted her companion's reading
by an exclamation:

"Seth Winters, do put up that tiresome paper and listen. I don't believe
you've comprehended a single sentence you've looked at. I know. Your
eyes had that hungry-for-Dorothy look in them. Leastwise, if they
hadn't, the feel of it is in my own old heart. A pretty how'd-ye-do,
when that little Lu Breckenridge-Hungerford sets out to hint to me of my
duty! a slip of a girl like her--the saucy chit!"

Old Seth laughed, so merrily that others drew near to learn the sport;
seeing which, Mistress Elizabeth Cecil Somerset-Calvert, rather
haughtily arose and remarked:

"Come, Cousin Seth, I'd like to take a walk."

Pacing the green grove, up and down its smooth paths, they were
undisturbed; but now all desire for conversation had left Mrs. Betty.
She was, indeed, in deep reflection; wondering if a certain course she
had followed were all for the best as she had hitherto esteemed it; and
the only hint she gave to the blacksmith was the sentence:

"I wanted to wait till she came of her own accord. I've never quite
forgiven her for preferring that woman Martha to