For another moment she wavered, then with a choking "Ah, Dick, I love you!" she let him take her to his arms. He kissed her shining eyes, and said, fervidly, "Sweetheart, I thank you."
It was in the first beauty of June that Dick Lancaster brought her that had been Dorothy Ware home to Lincolnville as his wife. The village, as I remember, was looking its fairest; the trees were radiant and profuse of shade; the grass was long and luscious, the birds were cheerful and bold. We welcomed the two with all the heartiness we had command of; we had known them as children, and we had loved their memory always, all through the years they had been gone. Of Dick's fame we were immeasurably proud. We wondered a little, indeed, that a man so dear to the world's heart should find satisfaction in living so far from the pulse of it all. But, we argued, if indeed, he preferred Lincolnville, all the greater was the honor.
Both, as we soon saw, had aged, Mr. Fairly, who had gone up to town to marry them, had told us as much, but we were but little prepared for the actual evidence. Those of us, too, who were permitted closer glimpses into the life of these two, observed in the two a passionate fondness for the fields, for the silence and stillness of our life there that was something very different from the matter-of-course acceptance of those attributes to our existence that existed in the rest of us. It was as if the place were, for them, a very harbor of refuge, a hospital in which to forget old ailment, or regain old healthfulness. These things, and many other signs of something wistful in the affection they bore the place and the dislike they long showed for leaving it, made up for me and many others, something of a mystery. At that time, I knew nothing of the things that had occurred since Dick left Lincolnville.
Afterwards, long afterwards, it happened that I came to know all the things that have been chronicled here. And, for my part, I came to love them the more. As Mr. Fairly, who, I suspect, also knew something of these things, once said to me, "If one has not seen the devil, one does not know enough to get out of his way." I consider that Dick Lancaster is much more to be commended for the honest life he lives among us than old Scrattan, the milkman, who has never been out of Lincoln County in his life. And as for Dorothy, all Lincolnville thinks she is the sweetest woman breathing--and when a village as given to gossip as is this place, agrees on any such eulogy as that, there must be potent reasons.