Mary Ware's Promised LandJohnston, Annie F. (Annie Fellows)
General
Mary Ware's Promised Land
Johnston, Annie F. (Annie Fellows)
Young women -- Juvenile fiction
Ever since the arrival of the first gift, a little silver vase from Miss
Allison McIntyre, which would always suggest the donor's love of flowers
and her garden which she shared lavishly with the whole Valley, Betty
had been in a beatific state of mind over the loving favor showed her by
her friends. Her pleasure reached high tide, however, when the last one
arrived, a box marked from Warwick Hall. It was from Madam Chartley. The
box was so big that they made all sorts of wild guesses as to its
contents. Layer after layer of paper and excelsior were lifted out, and
all they could find was more wrappings. At last, from the very centre,
Alec lifted out a fragile cup and saucer, which Betty recognized with a
cry of astonishment and delight.
"One of the ancestral teacups! I didn't suppose Madam would part with
one of them for anybody!"
She turned the bit of delicate china so that Mrs. Sherman could see the
crest, and the motto, "I keep tryste." The note folded inside brought
happy tears to her eyes, for it said that she was the only one to whom
one of these treasured heirlooms had been given. Madam felt deeply that
a spiritual kinship existed between her old ancestor Edryn and the
little friend who had kept tryst so faithfully in all things.
Jack came at five o'clock. He was to be the guest of Oaklea, but most of
his time was spent at The Locusts. That night, when moonlight and
springtime filled the valley with ethereal whiteness and sweetness, he
and Betty sat out on the porch. Three generations of Romance made
enchanted ground of the whole place. In the library an older Jack and
Elizabeth sat recalling the night like this when they had entered
_their_ Arcady. Outside, under the arching locusts, up and down, up and
down, paced the old Colonel in the moonlight. But not alone; for every
lilac-laden breeze that stirred the branches whispered softly,
"_Amanthis! Amanthis!_"
Once Jack looked at Betty, sitting beside him in the broad shaft of
moonlight, its glory streaming across her white dress and fair face and
said, "It's like that song, 'Oh, fair and sweet and holy,' out here. Why
couldn't we have the wedding on the porch, where I first saw you,
instead of in the house? Right here in this moonlight that makes you
look like a snowdrop."
"Would you really like to have it out here?" asked Betty, pleased by the
idea herself and pleased because he suggested it. "It would be a very
simple matter to have it so, and there'll be nobody critical enough
among our few guests to call us sentimental if we do."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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