It was a day of waiting, that day of spring; the May weather was as expectant as our fond hearts, and one could see the grass grow green hour by hour. The warm air was full of birds, there was a glow of light on the sea instead of the cold shining of chilly weather which had lingered late. There was a look on Mrs. Todd’s face which I saw once and could not meet again. She was in her highest mood. Then I went out early for a walk, and when I came back we sat in different rooms for the most part. There was such a thrill in the air that our only conversation was in her most abrupt and incisive manner. She was knitting, I believe, and as for me I dallied with a book. I heard her walking to and fro, and, the door being wide open now, she went out and paced the front walk to the gate as if she walked a quarter-deck. It is very solemn to sit waiting for the great events of life—most of us have done it again and again—to be expectant of life or expectant of death gives one the same feeling. But at the last Mrs. Todd came quickly back from the gate, and standing in the sunshine at the door, she beckoned me as if she were a sibyl. “I thought you comprehended everything the day you was up there,” she added with a little more patience in her tone, but I felt that she thought I had lost instead of gained since we parted the autumn before. “William’s made this pretext o’ goin’ fishin’ for the last time. ’Twouldn’t done to take notice, ’twould ‘a scared him to death! but there never was nobody took less comfort out o’ forty years courtin’. No, he won’t have to make no further pretexts,” said Mrs. Todd, with an air of triumph. “Did you know where he was going that day?” I asked, with a sudden burst of admiration at such discernment. “I did!” replied Mrs. Todd grandly. “Oh! but that pennyroyal lotion,” I indignantly protested, remembering that under pretext of mosquitoes she had besmeared the poor lover in an awful way—why, it was outrageous! Medea could not have been more conscious of high ultimate purposes. “Darlin’,” said Mrs. Todd, in the excitement of my arrival and the great concerns of marriage, “he’s got a beautiful shaped face, and they pison him very unusual—you wouldn’t have had him present himself to his lady all lop-sided with a mosquito-bite? Once when we was young I rode up with him, and they set upon him in concert the minute we entered the woods.” She stood before me reproachfully, and I was conscious of deserved rebuke. “Yes, you’ve come just in the nick of time to advise me about a bunnit. They say large bows on top is liable to be worn.” IV.