However, she succeeded in pouring out and carrying into the parlor, without accident, three platefuls of that excellent condiment which formed the frugal supper of the family; but which they ate, I grieve to say, in an orthodox southern fashion, with sugar or treacle, until Mr.Lyon--greatly horrified thereby--had instituted his national custom of "supping" porridge with milk.
It may be a very unsentimental thing to confess, but Hilary, who even at twenty was rather practical than poetical, never made the porridge without thinking of Robert Lyon, and the day when he first staid to supper, and ate it, or as he said and was very much laughed at, ate "them" with such infinite relish Since then, whenever he came, he always asked for his porridge, saying it carried him back to his childish days.

And Hilary, with that curious pleasure that women take in waiting upon any one unto whom the heart is ignorantly beginning to own the allegiance, humble yet proud, of Miranda to Ferdinand: "To be your fellow You may deny me; but I'll be your servant Whether you will or no." Hilary always contrived to make his supper herself.
Those pleasant days were now over.

Mr.Lyon was gone.

As she stool alone over the kitchen fire, she thought--as now and then she let herself think for a minute or two in her busy prosaic life--of that August night, standing at the front door, of his last "good-by," and last hand-clasp, tight, warm, and firm; and somehow she, like Johanna, trusted in him.
Not exactly in his love; it seemed almost impossible that he should love her, at least till she grew much more worthy of him than now; but in himself, that he would never be less himself, less thoroughly good and true than now.

That, some time, he would be sure to come back again, and take up his old relations with them, brightening their dull life with his cheerfulness; infusing in their feminine household the new element of a clear, strong, energetic, manly will, which sometimes made Johanna say that instead of twenty-five the young man might be forty; and, above all, bringing into their poverty the silent sympathy of one who had fought his own battle with the world--a hard one, too, as his face sometimes showed--though he never said much about it.
Of the results of this pleasant relation--whether she being the only truly marriageable person in the house.