From Sea to Shining Sea by JAMES ALEXANDER Thom

remember, Mister Clark, were your feelings something in the way of jealousy when you beheld that newcomer?”
    “Jealousy? Why, I don’t know, ma’am. But … P’r’aps theywere. I recall I wasn’t especially pleased.” It seemed an odd query.
    “Mmm,” she said, nodding and smiling. “
Our
firstborn was quite distressed to find an usurper when our second appeared. D’ye remember, Bill?”
    “I do,” he nodded, pursing his thin little mouth. This Lewis appeared to be some years older than his wife, and Jonathan had the passing notion that their children would be fortunate if they took their mother’s traits of appearance rather than their father’s. She was truly a fetching creature, with an aura of warm vitality about her that made Jonathan uncommonly aware of the loneliness of his bachelor life. He had always been too preoccupied with making his career to think forward much to marriage. His mind passed quickly over the several young women who seemed interested in him—some of them were very interested—but they all seemed either frivolous or half-alive when considered in comparison with this vibrant little equestrienne whom he had just now met. Jonathan Clark was not fool enough to become infatuated with the wife of a family friend, or anyone’s wife, for that matter. But something in her nature had stirred in him a kind of longing, as if any woman worth considering henceforth would have to be something like this.
    “… from Albemarle are coming,” Lewis was saying, and Jonathan came back as if from a reverie, strangely wistful and lonely. “Mister Lawrence rode with us a while, but hurried on ahead a while ago—at a gallop, actually—claiming that he was very, very thirsty. We offered him water, but apparently that wasn’t what he was thirsty for. D’you remember Lawrence? ’Twas he who bought your father’s farm in Albemarle.”
    “Aye. Him I remember. He owned an Indian boy, didn’t he?” Jonathan could remember the boy, a sad-faced wretch who had befriended George and made him a bow and arrows. Those two had learned to converse in some strange, made-up tongue. Jonathan had not developed any such affinity for the little savage, but George … Well, sometimes George seemed to Jonathan more Indian than Virginian.
    “I’m not sure anyone ever ‘owns’ an Indian,” Lewis said. “Not enough to keep the little heathen from running off one day. Near broke old Lawrence’s heart, it did, him having tried so hard to make him a proper Christian.”
    “Hm. Here, Mister Lewis, Ma’am, here we turn. This is the place, and let me be the first to bid you welcome to it. Ah, but I do love coming home!”
    Children whom Jonathan didn’t know were running, squealing,among the trees along the drive. In front of the house Cupid, in livery, was bowing and helping two feeble old gentlemen down from a chaise whose driver sat with upright whip and an air of importance. From the open front door of the house came a drone of many voices, talking, laughing voices, and now and then a loud guffaw or the excited squeal of a girl. He knew the family certainly must be busy with company; usually he was seen and hailed before he was halfway up the drive Now Cupid saw him, and broke into an ivory grin, but said nothing and continued to hand the elderly passengers down from the chaise.
    “There’s Jonathan!” he heard Edmund’s voice shout from somewhere in the house, and then, before he could dismount, he saw the family boiling out the door to meet him.
    “Hullo! Hullo,” he cried, dropping to the ground and taking hugs. “Ma, look, I’ve guided the Lewises in. Hey, Pa! And, say! How d’ye, Billy?” The little lad was looking critically at him, studying his plain, dark apparel. “Nothing t’ say, eh? Ha, ha! Hey, Annie, y’ look like you’re about to have an apoplexy! Is Owen here yet, eh? Maybe there’s time yet to talk ’im out o’ this foolishness.”
    “Oh, you!”
    “A cup! Quick, get this man a