Part 10
Nelly followed, and stood there, in the soft summer dusk,--a pretty picture, with the wild-rose flush dawning in her cheeks, and a new light kindling her eyes. She listened carefully to all his injunctions, and then turned as if to go. But he put out a hand to detain her.
“How very much I owe to you!” he said.
“_You_, how?” And a deep, deep crimson dyed Nelly’s face and throat. In that moment she thought of her “bumptious” valentine, which had not crossed her mind before for a long time.
He looked at her with a smile in his eyes, but with a face that preserved all its respectful gravity. He took a red leather case out of his pocket, and from the case he took the very old valentine which Nelly remembered so well. Then he produced the brief note she had written that afternoon; and still there was light enough left in the day to see them by, as he held them side by side.
“Your hand has matured somewhat since this valentine was written,” he remarked quietly; “but some of these letters I should know anywhere. No one could deceive me.”
“I did not suppose you had kept that foolish thing,” Nelly said, with a pitiful little quiver in her voice, as if she were just on the point of bursting into tears. “I am so ashamed!”
Dr. Joe looked at her a moment, as she stood there in the waning light,--a lovely, graceful girl from whom any man might be proud to win even a passing interest. So this was the woman, the thought of whom he had carried in his heart for years! If he had ever done any good thing, he was paid for it in the satisfaction of that hour.
“Are you sorry,” he asked slowly, “that you have helped one man to be his best self? Those words of yours were to me like the voice of my inmost soul. Since then this paper has never left me, nor have I ever ceased to strive to be worthy of the esteem of my unknown ‘valentine.’ If ever I have been generous instead of selfish, brave instead of cowardly, strong instead of weak, it has been because I have remembered the words written here, and meant to live in their spirit. Are you sorry for that? or do you grudge me the dear pleasure of thanking you?”
“No, I’m not sorry, nor do I grudge you any thing; but it was a girl’s freak, and I am not worthy of so much praise and honor.”
“It was a good girl’s good intention,” he said almost solemnly. “Let us be thankful that it succeeded.”
Nelly went back to the bedside of the old woman with a fluttering heart. How strange it seemed to think this sick woman was old enough to have outlived all anxieties except those about her pains and her supper! Had not she been young once? and had no one ever looked at her as Dr. Joe looked?
The next morning he came again. His medicine, a night’s sleep, Nelly’s care,--something seemed to have given the poor old patient a fresh lease of life. There was no need that Nelly should stay with her any more; but she went to see her daily, and it was curious how often Dr. Joe’s visits happened at the same time.
One night the doctor had left his horse at home, and he and Nelly walked away together. They talked about the lingering sunset and the soft south wind and even the old woman; for Nelly, woman-like, was struggling desperately to keep Dr. Joe from saying what she desperately wanted to hear. But, at last, it came,--a half-blunt, half-awkward speech, yet with Dr. Joe’s honest heart in it,--
“I’ve lived all these years just to earn your esteem, and now I find I don’t care a thing about that unless I can also win your love.”
I think Nelly’s answer must have satisfied him, for she is Mrs. Joseph Greene now; and that valentine--worn and old, but choicely framed--always hangs over the doctor’s study table.
* * * * *
_Bright; Lively, and Enjoyable_
“Jolly Good Times” Series
_By Mary P. Wells Smith_
JOLLY GOOD TIMES; or, CHILD LIFE ON A FARM. JOLLY GOOD TIMES AT SCHOOL; also, SOME TIMES NOT SO JOLLY. THE BROWNS. THEIR CANOE TRIP. JOLLY GOOD TIMES AT HACKMATACK. MORE GOOD TIMES AT HACKMATACK. JOLLY GOOD TIMES TO-DAY. A JOLLY GOOD SUMMER.
_With Illustrations, 12 mo, cloth, gilt, $1.25 per volume. The set of eight volumes, uniformly bound in cloth, gilt, in a box, $10.00._
Of these stories the Boston “Transcript” says: “Few series of juvenile books appeal more strongly to children than the ‘Jolly Good Times’ Series, written by Mary P. Wells Smith. The naturalness of the stories, their brightness, their truth to boy and girl life and character, and the skill with which the author manages incident and dialogue, have given them deserved popularity.”
It is Mrs. Smith’s happy ability to take the incidents of child-life,--such a life as any child of bright mind and sweet character, blessed with the surroundings of a good home, might have,--and to record them with such faithfulness to the child’s character, and yet with such charm in the narrative, as to make them engagingly interesting to other children.--_Gazette and Courier_, Greenfield, Mass.
The Young Puritans Series
_By Mary P. Wells Smith_
_Author of “The Jolly Good Times” Series_
THE YOUNG PURITANS OF OLD HADLEY. THE YOUNG PURITANS IN KING PHILIP’S WAR. THE YOUNG PURITANS IN CAPTIVITY. THE YOUNG AND OLD PURITANS OF HATFIELD.
_Cloth, 12mo, Illustrated, each, $1.25._
Mrs. Smith deserves very hearty commendation for the admirable pictures of Puritan life which are drawn with a skilful hand in this book. She has chosen a representative Puritan village as the scene, and the period of very early settlement of western Massachusetts for her story, a village which retains many of its early features to this day. Mrs. Smith knows the people of whom she writes thoroughly, and holds them in high and loving esteem. Even the most prejudiced reader can hardly close this book without seeing in these genuine Puritan people a phase of human life at once fine in its courage, its endurance of terrible hardships, and not unbeautiful in its childlike acceptance of God’s dealings and its daily hunger and thirst after righteousness.--_The Churchman._
THE YOUNG PURITANS OF OLD HADLEY. 12mo. Cloth. Illustrated. $1.25.
A capital colonial story.--_Congregationalist_, Boston.
She catches the very spirit of Puritan life.--_Chicago Inter-Ocean._
The work has historic value as well as unique interest.--LILIAN WHITING, _in Chicago Inter-Ocean_.
An excellent book for school libraries.--_Literary News_, New York.
The adventures of the boys while hunting, the trapping of wolves and panthers, which infested the forests in those early days, the encounters with the Indians, friendly and otherwise, are incidents which make up a book which will fascinate all young readers.--_San Francisco Bulletin._
The author has studied her subject carefully; and the pictures of this life, extinct, yet still blood of our blood and bone of our bone, have unusual interest.--_Chicago Dial._
Mrs. Smith has proven that she can write as simple and natural a story of child-life when the scene is laid two hundred and fifty years ago as when she chooses to describe country life in the New England of the present century.--_Christian Register._
THE YOUNG PURITANS IN KING PHILIP’S WAR. Illustrated by L. J. BRIDGMAN. 12mo. Cloth. $1.25.
From a letter written the author by Bishop F. D. Huntington, Syracuse, N. Y.: “Have read all the pages through, every word,--finding the whole volume readable, entertaining, and satisfactory. Of course I feel rather competent to say that, in the phraseology, the territorial descriptions, the geography, the account of customs, language, family habits, natural phenomena, you are singularly correct, accurate, and felicitous.”
Mrs. Smith seems to have caught the very breath and echo of those old days, and she makes one seem not to be merely reading of those Puritans and their constant struggles with their savage neighbors, but to be actually beholding them.--_Jersey City Evening Journal._
The history of the seventeenth century in New England would gain new life when read in the light of such books.--_Christian Endeavor Herald._
THE YOUNG PURITANS IN CAPTIVITY. Illustrated by JESSIE WILLCOX SMITH. 12mo. Cloth. $1.25.
Nothing could be more interesting than the period of which this story treats, and the author has handled the subject in a manner that is highly creditable. The reader will be for the nonce a Puritan, and will follow the adventures of three children taken captive by the Indians, feeling that he is a participant in the scenes so well portrayed. He will sleep in the Indians’ wigwam and breathe the odor of the pines. He will paddle a canoe upon the broad waters of the Connecticut, when New England was but a wilderness, and get an insight into Indian nature which he probably never had before.--_Sacramento Bee._
She shows the same power of graphic description, the same faithful use of the best available material, and the same logical way of putting it into shape.--_Commercial Advertiser, N. Y._
Mrs. Smith has made history live again in her life-like narrative. The children of to-day may well learn something of the sterner virtues in reading this story of the endurance and fortitude of children of two centuries ago.--_Springfield Republican._
THE YOUNG AND OLD PURITANS OF HATFIELD. Illustrated by BERTHA C. DAY. 12mo. $1.25.
LITTLE, BROWN, & CO., Publishers, 254 WASHINGTON STREET, BOSTON.
End of Project Gutenberg's New Bed-Time Stories, by Louise Chandler Moulton