Once during the afternoon, when Dan had left them for a few minutes, they had looked after him lovingly:
"Dear Dan!" said Charles. "I don"t know what I should have done without him. He must have his college course. How would you like to have us send him to Harvard as a sort of thank-offering for what he has done for us?"
And Dawn smiled happily into her husband"s eyes as she answered:
"Oh, how beautiful! Could we?"
They planned it all out briefly then, and that evening, at the setting of the sun, as they rode forth from the plague-stricken village toward the high, cool hills where waited the little white house, Charles broached the subject to Dan.
Charles and Dawn were in the back seat, Dan driving in front, with Rags at his feet, with his head held proudly, as if he had always ridden in a carriage with two gray horses.
"Dan," said Charles, leaning forward a little that he might the better see the boy"s face, "when Dawn and I go back to Cambridge in the fall, for my last year at Harvard, we"re going to take you with us."
Rags smiled widely. He had heard the talk in the afternoon, and he expected to go to college himself.
Dan turned with a radiant, awed face, and grasped Charles"s hand.
"Could I?" he asked eagerly. "_How_ could I?"
"You may need some preparation," said Charles. "Wouldn"t it be a good idea for you to come up to our house in the hills and let me coach you?
How about it, Dawn? We have always room for Dan, haven"t we?"
And Dawn, smiling and happy, a.s.sured the boy that he would always be welcome.
Later, when Charles drew Dawn"s head down upon his shoulder in the darkness, put his arm close about her, and with his free hand held both of hers, there was tender joy and thankfulness.
Dan and Rags, up in front, knew that there were depths of happiness in the back seat not for them, but they were content, for were they not going to college, and in company with the two they loved best of all?
A week later Charles and Dawn stood together on the hillside, in front of their own little house. It was very early in the morning, and off beyond another hill the sun was just flashing into view-a great red disc against a sky of amethyst and opal. Hill, valley, winding river, and every tree and shrub were touched with the glory of the dawn.
They were watching Dan ride away to his home, to gather his belongings, and prepare his family for the new order of his life.
In the afternoon Betty was to arrive by stage-coach. She was to spend the rest of the hot weather in the cool hills with them, until the cholera had disappeared. This was their first time absolutely alone together since they had known each other.
They stood silent, watching the gray figure of horse and man as it proceeded slowly down the hillside and disappeared among the trees in the shadowy road, where night was yet lurking. Slowly, slowly, the sun slipped up, until a great ball of ruby light grew into a brilliant glory their eyes could not look upon. And stretched before them lay the day, with all its radiant possibilities.
""And he shall be as the light of the morning when the sun riseth, even a morning without clouds; as the tender gra.s.s springing out of the earth by clear shining after rain,"" quoted Charles solemnly.
They involuntarily drew closer together as they looked. Then the husband put his arm about the wife and, looking down upon her, said:
"Dawn of the Morning, do you know that you are like all that to me?"
She hid her happy face on his shoulder, and he bent down and whispered:
"Darling! Dawn of my morning! My Dawn!"