It was a
pleasant face, unstirred by any touch of fate, with calm blue eyes
awaiting the future.
The hostess saw, I fancied, my set gaze, and rising came toward me as if
minded to put at ease the new-comer. "Thee does not know our friends?"
she said. "Let me make thee known to them."
I rose quickly and said, "I shall be most glad."
We went over toward the dame between the windows. "Mother," she said,
raising her voice, "this is our new friend, Henry Shelburne, from New
England."
As she spoke I saw the old lady stir and move, and after a moment she
said, "Has he a four-leaved clover?"
"Always that is what she says. Thee will get used to it in time."
"We all do," said a voice at my elbow; and turning I saw a man of about
thirty years, dressed in the plainest-cut Quaker clothes, but with a
contradiction to every tenet of Fox written on his face, where a brow of
gravity for ever read the riot act to eyes that twinkled with
ill-repressed mirth. When I came to know him well, and saw the
preternatural calm of his too quiet lips, I used to imagine that unseen
little demons of ready laughter were for ever twitching at their
corners.
"Mother is very old," said my hostess.
"Awfully old," said my male friend, whose name proved to be Richard
Wholesome.
"Thee might think it sad to see one whose whole language has come to be
just these words, but sometimes she will be glad and say, 'Has thee a
four-leaved clover?' and sometimes she will be ready to cry, and will
say only the same words.
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