Beauty for Ashes by Grace Livingston Hill

Author:Grace Livingston Hill [Hill, Grace Livingston]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-62836-295-4
Publisher: Barbour Publishing, Inc.
Published: 2013-03-24T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 10

Vanna came home from the corn planting sweetly thoughtful and spoke no more of insincerity or doubtful questionings.

They had had a glorious time. The day had been perfect. Each of them had ridden the corn planter once around the field and had the thrill of watching it perform its intricate function with speed and accuracy. They asked questions that would have astonished a scientist and made an old farmer laugh, but they were tremendously interested and had an immense respect when they came away for a young man who was willing to give up a city career, bury himself in the wilderness, and get down to hard work.

They had gone through the old farmhouse, only a small wing of which Robert Carroll was using for himself, the rest being entirely empty, and had admired the spacious rooms and the pleasant outlook. Vanna had stood for a long moment alone at one of the upstairs windows, looking off to the bright hills and wondering how it would seem to be the mistress of that house and live there with none of the gaieties in her life that she had always had. Then Robert Carroll came over to the window and smiled down upon her, and the drab outlook suddenly grew bright.

“You know, it isn’t really just a game I’m playing,” he said, and his tone was strangely deep and significant.

She looked up, startled, as if he had read her thoughts.

“We don’t have picnics under the trees every day, nor strawberries and a group of friends. There are cold days and dark days and lonely days and a year’s round of work whether one feels like it or not.”

Was he trying to make her understand the difference between her world and his? Vanna looked off to the quiet hills and felt a wrenching of her heart. What was there about this young man that so intrigued her? It was powerful. She must get away from it. She did not belong in this world, and it was casting a spell over her.

Yet she lingered a long time at the window talking, trying to find out the secret of the peace in this young man’s life, while down on the front porch Gloria and Murray MacRae were poring over a small, limp Bible that Murray carried in his pocket.

It was a bright simple day, full of wholesome activity and restful talk, but its results were far reaching.

A few days later at the dinner table, Mrs. Sutherland demanded the attention of her abstracted husband to a letter that Vanna had written her.

“Charles, there’s something I must speak to you about at once. Do give me your attention for a few minutes. I’m worried nearly to death,” she said in a tone that her husband knew meant business.

“Worried?” he said vaguely, lifting questioning eyes across the table, just as though he was not worrying himself these days and nights all the time. “What is the matter now?”

“Why, I’ve had a letter from Vanna,” she announced, unfolding one of Vanna’s brief scrawls, two words to a line, three lines to a page.

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