kitchen door to meet him. She saw him running through the rows of
cabbages, his face shining with perspiration and excitement, a
light in his eyes which she had not seen for years. She recalled,
without sentiment, that he looked like that when she had called
him--a poor farm hand of her father's--out of the brush heap at the
back of their former home, in Illinois, to learn the consent of her
parents. The recollection was the more embarrassing as he threw
his arms around her, and pressed a resounding kiss upon her sallow
cheek.

"Sakes alive! Mulrady!" she said, exorcising the ghost of a blush
that had also been recalled from the past with her housewife's
apron, "what are you doin', and company expected every minit?"

"Malviny, I've struck it; and struck it rich!"

She disengaged herself from his arms, without excitement, and
looked at him with bright but shrewdly observant eyes.

"I've struck it in the well--the regular vein that the boys have
been looking fer. There's a fortin' fer you and Mamie: thousands
and tens of thousands!"

"Wait a minit."

She left him quickly, and went to the foot of the stairs. He could
hear her wonderingly and distinctly. "Ye can take off that new
frock, Mamie," she called out.

There was a sound of undisguised expostulation from Mamie.