Motherly was the quality written full upon Mrs. Allison's face. Her thoughts, her schemes, her purposes, her ambitions of life, were all colored by this maternal attribute. In her daily homage and obeisance to God, Whom she worshiped with the most childlike faith and simplicity; in the execution of the manifold duties of her home, Marjorie was to her ever a treasure of great price. She was sustained in her aims and purposes by an enduring power of will,--a power clothed with the soft, warm, living flesh of a kindly heart.
Her marriage with Matthew Allison had been happy, a happiness intensified and concretely embodied in Marjorie, the only child vouchsafed to them by the Creator. How often, at the time when the deepening shadows moved their way across the dimming landscape, announcing to the work worn world the close of another day, would she sit for a brief while in silence and take complacence in the object of her hopes and aspirations! It was Marjorie for whom she lived and toiled and purposed. And it was Marjorie who embodied the sum-total of her fancies and ambitions and aspirations, and translated them into definite forms and realities.
A beautiful landscape unrolled itself before Stephen as he leisurely rode along the Germantown road. The midsummer sun was now high in the heavens, with just a little stir in the air to temper its warmth and oppressiveness. Fragments of clouds, which seemed to have torn themselves loose from some great heap massed beyond the ridge of low hills to the westward, drifted lazily across the waste of blue sky, wholly unconcerned as to their ultimate lot or destination. Breaths of sweet odor, from freshly cut hay or the hidden foliage bounding the road, were wafted along in the embraces of the gentle breeze. Away to the left and before him, as his horse cantered along, swelled the countryside in gentle undulations of green and brown, disfigured now and again by irregular patches of field and orchard yielding to cultivation; while to the side a stone wall humped itself along the winding road into the distance, its uniformity of contour broken here and there by a trellis work of yellow jasmine or crimson rambler, alternately reflecting lights and shadows from the passing clouds and sunshine. It was a day when all nature was in perfect tune, its harmony sweetly blending with the notes of gladness that throbbed in Stephen's heart. Yet he was scarce aware of it all, so completely absorbed was he in the confusion of his own thought.