But Mr. Wright's cause was aided by some one stronger than Dr.
Lavendar. Helena's attention was so fixed on the visitor who was
coming to the Stuffed Animal House that Sam's conversation ceased to
amuse her. Those little night-drawers on which she pricked her fingers
interested her a thousand times more than did his dramatic visions.
They interested her so much that sometimes she could almost forget
that Lloyd Pryor's visit was delayed. For though it was the first of
May, he had not come again. "I am so busy," he wrote; "it is
impossible for me to get away. I suppose David will have his sling all
ready for me when I do arrive?"
Helena was sitting on the porch with her clumsy needlework when Sarah
brought her the letter, and after she had read it, she tore it up
angrily. "He was in Mercer a week ago; I know he was, because there is
always that directors' meeting on the last Thursday in April, so he
must have been there. And he wouldn't come!" Down in the orchard the
apple-trees were in blossom, and when the wind stirred, the petals
fell in sudden warm white showers; across the sky, from west to east,
was a path of mackerel clouds. It was a pastel of spring--a dappled
sky, apple blossoms, clover, and the river's sheen of gray-blue. All
about her were the beginnings of summer--the first exquisite green of
young leaves; oaks, still white and crumpled from their furry sheaths;
horse-chestnuts, each leaf drooping from its stem like a hand bending
at the wrist; a thin flicker of elm buds, still distrustful of the
sun. Later, this delicate dance of foliage would thicken so that the
house would be in shadow, and the grass under the locusts on either
side of the front door fade into thin, mossy growth. But just now it
was overflowing with May sunshine. "Oh, he would enjoy it if he
would only come," she thought. Well, anyhow, David would like it; and
she began to fell her seam with painstaking unaccustomed fingers.
The child was to come that day. Half a dozen times she dropped her
work to run to the gate, and shielding her eyes with her hand looked
down the road to Old Chester, but there was no sign of the jogging
hood of the buggy. Had anything happened? Was he sick? Had Dr.
Lavendar changed his mind? Her heart stood still at that. She
debated whether or not she should go down to the Rectory and find out
what the delay meant? Then she called to one of the servants who was
crossing the hall, that she wondered why the little boy who was to
visit her, did not come. Her face cleared at the reminder that the
child went to school in the morning.