Ruth!"

"Father!" laughed the daughter, "isn't this rather youngish?" But she
laid her hand promptly upon Arthur's, and the lines of the General's
face deepened playfully, and Mrs. Morris's dimple did the same, as
Godfrey thrust his hand in upon Ruth's, unasked. The matron laughed very
tenderly on the key of O while she added her hand, and received
Leonard's heavy palm above it. Then Arthur clapped a second hand upon
Leonard's, and Leonard was about to lay a second quietly upon Arthur's,
when Isabel, rose-red from brow to throat, gayly broke the heap and
embraced Ruth.

"Well, honey-girlie," said Mrs. Morris, as she and Isabel reentered
their cottage, "wasn't it sweet of them all, that 'laying on of hands,'
as Arthur called it?"

"Yes," replied the Southern girl, starting up the cramped old New
England stairway to her room. "It was child's play, but it was very
sweet of them, and especially of the General."

The mother detained her fondly. "And still, my child, you're not
satisfied?"

"Ah, mother, are you blind, stone blind, or do you only hope I am?"

"My dearie!"

"Why, mother, excepting Leonard, we haven't had one word of true consent
from one of them."