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She was all the more desponding as she remembered how conscientious he was. "If he thinks it's wrong, there's no hope," she thought, drearily. After breakfast Mr. Dimmerly said, "Nephew, I wish you would do a little writing for me; my hand isn't as steady as it was"; and he took the student off to his private study. After the writing was finished, Mr.
Their brief but significant tete-a-tete was now interrupted by De Forrest, who came forward to thank Lottie for her costly gift to him, a gift bought on Broadway. He had uneasily marked the fact that she had given something to Hemstead, but when he saw that it was only a sermon-cover, he was quite relieved. "Come here, Frank, and show me your present," said Mr. Dimmerly, a little later.
But Lottie was not a bit interested in the millennial Dimmerlys, and, putting her arms around her uncle's neck in a way that surprised that ancient fossil, she coaxed: "Won't you promise me, uncle, that as soon as he is safe you will come out and let me know?" "Safe! He's safe now. Who ever heard of even a half-blooded Dimmerly dying from a mere faint?
But he finally concluded that, even if you did love him a little, it would be very unmanly to take advantage of your feelings to get you into the awful scrape of a home missionary's life." As Mr. Dimmerly proceeded in this last speech, joy came into Lottie's face like the dawn of a June morning. Tears gathered slowly in her eyes, but their source was happiness, not sorrow.
Dimmerly abruptly remarked, in his sententious manner: "Well, nephew, I suppose you gave us a powerful sermon this morning. It has made us all deucedly uncomfortable, anyhow. But I've no doubt the old rule holds good, the worse the medicine is to take the more certain to cure."
Dimmerly stopped, took off his spectacles, and coolly wiped them as he said: "I'm through, and my part of the story is true. This Giles de Laval, or, as he is better known in French history, the Marshal de Retz, destroyed hundreds of children, at ages varying from eight to eighteen, and in ways far worse than I have described. So, Lottie, have you had enough of high tragedy?"
Dimmerly, who had quietly watched proceedings, broke out into his cackling laugh, as he chuckled, "He shows his blood. A dozen seminaries could not quench him utterly." Mrs. Marchmont frowned.
"Ha, ha!" chimed out Lottie's laugh. "That is better than your logic." "Frank! that you should call this dear little creature a cur!" said Mrs. Marchmont, comforting her still whining pet. "What DISCOURTESY!" said Lottie. "What is the matter with you all?" asked Mr. Dimmerly, rising. "From talking Latin you have got on something that I understand as well as Choctaw.
"I trust we shall keep the steady cold out of doors, and that ALL our guests will find only summer warmth within." "Really, auntie, you put me in quite a melting mood." "No need of that, Lottie, for you are the month of June all the year round," said her aunt. "The month of April, rather," suggested Bel. "I should say July or August," added Mr. Dimmerly, laughing.
Dimmerly shuffled away by himself, with a sound between a sniffle and his old chuckle, muttering, "I don't believe it's 'stopped, after all. Anyway, I wish she were going to be a home missionary in my home." Lottie went with Dan again to the pond, and then to the "fallen tree"; but she found no other tryst there than memories, that, in view of what had happened, were very painful.
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