My wife
will be a pearl of great price," he added fondly, and I intend to
provide a right setting for her!"
This was all said in a glow of love and joy, pride and ambition,
as Ivory paced up and down before the living-room fireplace while
Waitstill was hanging the freshly laundered curtains.
Ivory was right; Waitstill Baxter was, indeed, a jewel of a
woman. She had little knowledge, but much wisdom, and after all,
knowledge stands for the leaves on a tree and wisdom for the
fruit. There was infinite richness in the girl, a richness that
had been growing and ripening through the years that she thought
so gray and wasted. The few books she owned and loved had
generally lain unopened, it is true, upon her bedroom table, and
she held herself as having far too little learning to be a worthy
companion for Ivory Boynton; but all the beauty and cheer a
comfort that could ever be pressed into the arid life of the
Baxter household had come from Waitstill's heart, and that heart
had grown in warmth and plenty year by year.
Those lonely tasks, too hard for a girl's hands, those unrewarded
drudgeries, those days of faithful labor in and out of doors,
those evenings of self-sacrifice over the mending-basket; the
quiet avoidance of all that might vex her father's crusty temper,
her patience with his miserly exactions; the hourly holding back
of the hasty word,--all these had played their part; all these
had been somehow welded into a strong, sunny, steady,
life-wisdom, there is no better name for it; and so she had
unconsciously the best of all harvests to bring as dower to a
husband who was worthy of her.
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