"Why, of course I can," he cried, blushing joyfully all over his handsome face--"of course I can, Charlotte!" And he tried to catch one of her hands hanging in the folds of her purple dress, but she drew it away.
"I want to see you a few minutes about something," she said, soberly; and then she pressed forward to speak to another girl, and he could not get another word with her about it.
Charlotte, after she got home from the party, had changed her pretty new gown for her every-day one of mottled brown calico set with a little green sprig, and had helped her mother get supper.
Cephas, however, was late, and did not come home until just before Thomas Payne arrived.

Sarah had begun to worry.

"I don't see where your father is," she kept saying to Charlotte.

When she heard his shuffling step on the door-stone she started as if he had been her lover.

When he came in she scrutinized him anxiously, to see if he looked ill or disturbed.