Then presently, the butter deposited, the trap door closed, and the noggin of milk presented and quaffed, the two came through the long passage dividing the dairy from the kitchen, and were met by the mistress of the house, our Priscilla, a little older, but still as charming as when we first knew her, and showing among her daughters like the rose among its buds, the glorious fulfillment of a gracious promise. “Good-morrow to you, Alick. Go into the sitting-room, you and Betty,--or no; Sally, you’ve been busy while Betty was on her travels, you go and make Alick miserable till dinner’s dished”-- “Nay, dame, I’m beholden to you, but I must go”-- “Surely you must go, but not without your dinner, my lad. ’Tis Saturday and salt-fish dinner, you know, and I’ll warrant me your mother’s ’ll be no better than I shall give you.” “My mother’d be the first to say she’s no match for Mistress Alden in delicate cookery.” “There, there, go say your pretty things to the girls, Sally or Betty, it matters not which, but don’t whet your wit on an old woman like me. Be off with you!” Laughing and well pleased that fortune so favored his half-formed wishes, Alick followed Sally through the sitting-room to the front door, standing wide open to the summer; and then, sitting on the threshold, their feet upon the great natural doorstone which their children’s and their children’s children’s feet should press, the man and the maid entered into that fairyland we all pass through once in our lives. “And some give thanks, and some blaspheme, And most forget, but either way, That and the child’s forgotten dream Are all the light of all our day.” “Alick! Sally! Come to dinner!” cried Betty’s blithe voice; but as the young man arose and turned his glowing face toward her, she stared at it for a moment in astonishment, and then turned sharply away to hide the smile that would in her own despite curl her lips. “They’re stronger than we women in some ways, but they’re wondrously weak in others,” was the thought beneath that smile. In the great airy kitchen, where no fire was made in the warm weather, a table was spread large enough to accommodate, besides the heads of the family, their eight children, and the two men and a woman who lived in the house really as “help,” and not servants. A fourteenth seat was now placed for the guest between Betty and her brother Joseph, still his mother’s true lover and helper, but Alick noted with pleasure that Sally sat opposite, and gave him the opportunity to study her face, which he seemed never to have seen before. The long grace ended, and the clatter of chairs and feet upon the bare floor a little subsided, John Alden, viewing with satisfaction the great codfish lying at full length upon the platter yet longer than itself, said,-- “George Soule has had more than ordinary luck with his dunfish this season; don’t they say so at your house, Alick?” “Yes, sir, a small share, if you please.”