West Lawn, and The rector of St. Mark's

The Author’s Story.

The great house at Beechwood was closed, and the first September sunshine which lay so warmly on the grassy lawn and blooming flower-garden, found no entrance through the doors and curtained windows of what had been Margaret Russell’s home, and whither they were bringing her lifeless form. During the past week there had been hot, passionate tears wept in that desolate home, and touching childish prayers made that God would spare the sick mother till her broken-hearted boy could tell how sorry he was for the angry words spoken to her, and for the many acts of disobedience which came thronging around him like so many accusing spirits. Poor Johnnie’s heart was almost crushed when he heard that his mother must die, and calling Ben and Burt to him, he bade them kneel with him, and ask that God would give her back to them alive. And so with concern for Johnnie on their baby faces, rather than concern for their mother, the two little boys prayed that “God would make mamma well, and not let her die, or anyway send home Auntie Dora.”

This was Ben’s idea, and it brought a world of comfort, making him ask Johnnie “if it wouldn’t be nicer after all to have Auntie than mamma.”

“Perhaps it would, if I hadn’t been so sassy to her that morning, twitting her about not caring for us like Auntie, and telling her to dry up. Oh, oh!” and the conscience-smitten boy rolled on the floor in his first real sorrow.

To Ben, looking on in wonder, there came a thought fraught, as he hoped, with comfort to his brother, and pursing up his little mouth, he said:

“Pho! I wouldn’t keel over like that ’cause I’d said dry up. ’Taint a swear. It’s a real nice word, and all the boys in the street say so.”

Still Johnnie was not comforted, and in a state of terrible suspense he waited from day to day until the fatal morning when there came a telegram which he spelled out with Burt and Ben sitting on the doorstep beside him, their fat hands on his knee, and their little round dirty faces turned inquiringly towards him as he read:

“Your mother died at midnight. We shall be home to-morrow, on the evening train.”

There was at first no sudden outburst, but a compressed quivering of the lip, a paling of the cheek, a hopeless look in the eyes, which closed tightly as Johnnie began to realize the truth. Then, with a loud, wild cry, he threw himself upon the grass, while Ben and Burt laughed gleefully at the contortions of body which they fancied were made for their amusement. At last, however, they too understood it partially, and Ben tried to imitate his brother’s method of expressing grief by also rolling in the grass, while Burt, thinking intently for a moment, said, with a sigh of relief:

“I’m plaguy glad Aunty isn’t dead too.”

And this was all the consolation there was in that home at Beechwood. Dora was not dead. She was coming home and would bring sunshine with her. With a desire to have everything done in accordance with her taste, and also with a view to honor his mother’s memory, Johnnie, roused at last, and without a word of consultation with any one, sought the old colored sexton, bidding him toll the bell, and adding with a quivering lip:

“It’s for my mother, and if you’ll toll it extra for an hour I’ll give you half a dollar now, and a bushel of shag-barks in the fall.”

It did not occur to the negro that possibly some higher authority than Johnnie’s was needful ere he proceeded to toll for a person dead in Saratoga, but love of gain and shag-barks predominated over other feelings, and for a full hour and a quarter the bell from the old church-steeple rang out its solemn tones, tolling till the villagers wondered if it would never stop, and repaired, some of them, to the spot, where Johnnie sat like a second Shylock, holding the sexton’s watch and keeping accurate note of time as the old man bent to his task, and tolled that long requiem for Margaret Russell. This done Johnnie wended his way to a dry-goods store, and before nightfall there were streamers of crape hanging from the gate and from every door-knob, while a band of the same was tied around the arms of Ben and Burt, who wore them quietly for a time and then made what they called horse blankets for their velocipede. Poor little babies of four and five, they knew no better, and only acted as other children do when left wholly to themselves. Years hence they will weep for the mother scarcely remembered, but now her death was nothing to them, except as they saw the deep distress of Johnnie, who, long after they were sleeping in their cribs, sobbed passionately upon his pillow, sorrowing most of all for the angry words spoken to the mother who would never know his grief. How long to him were the hours of the next day, when they waited for the dead. It was also a day of peace and quiet, for owing to Johnnie’s continual efforts there was only a single fight between the little boys, who otherwise comported themselves with admirable propriety, asking often when Aunt Dora would come, and if Johnnie was sure she was not dead too?

At last the train came screaming in, and shortly after the hearse stopped before the gate, while the coffin was brought slowly up the walk and placed in the darkened parlor. With a great sobbing cry Johnnie sprang towards Dora, but suddenly checked himself, as there flashed upon his mind that to his father belonged the first greeting of sorrow. And who that has passed through such a scene that knows not the comfort there is in the sympathy of a warm-hearted child! Squire Russell felt it keenly, as he held his first-born in his arms and heard his boyish attempts at consolation.

“We’ll love each other more, father, now our mother’s gone. Poor father, don’t cry so hard. If you’ll stop I’ll try to do so too. We’ve got Aunt Dora left and all the children. Benny, come and kiss poor father, because mother is dead.”

Such were Johnnie’s words, and they fell soothingly on the father’s heart, making him think he had not lost everything which made his life desirable. He had his children still, and he had Dora too. She was in the nursery now, with Ben and Burt clinging to her neck, and asking why she cried when they were so glad to have her back, asking, too, what made mamma so cold, and why she was sleeping in that long queer box on the parlor table. They did not know what death meant, and continued their questionings until their eyelids closed in slumber, and they forgot the long box on the parlor table, with the mother sleeping in it.

The night was hot and sultry, and as Dora lay tossing restlessly, she fancied she heard a sound from the parlor, which was just beneath her room, and throwing on her dressing-gown she went noiselessly down the stairs to the parlor door, which was open, and saw a little form kneeling by the coffin and talking to the unconscious dead.

“O mother, maybe you can hear me; I’m Johnnie, and I’m so sorry I was ever bad to you, and made your head ache so! Poor mother, I used to think I loved Aunt Dora best, but now I know I didn’t! There’s nothing like a mother, and I was going to tell you so when you got home, but you’re dead and I can’t! O mother! mother! will you never know?”

“She does; she did know, Johnnie, for I told her,” Dora said, advancing into the room and taking the child in her arms; “I told her you were sorry, and she forgave you freely, sending you messages of love, and bidding me cut her longest, brightest curl for you. I did so, Johnnie; it is in my room, and to-morrow you shall have it.”

“Why not to-night?” Johnnie pleaded, and so his aunt brought him the lock of hair cut from Margaret’s head, the mother’s last memento, which Johnny took with him to his room, sleeping more quietly because of that tress of hair upon his pillow.

It was a long procession which followed Margaret to her grave, and for the sake of Johnnie the sexton again tolled for the dead, until the husband and the sister wished the sad sounds would cease. Sadly they returned to the house, leaving Margaret behind them, and missing her more than one month ago they would have thought it possible. But as the days went by the family gradually resumed its wonted cheerfulness, for Dora was there still: their head, their blessing, and comforter. Many lonely hours Squire Russell experienced, it is true, but there was always a solace in knowing that Dora would welcome him home after a brief and necessary absence; that Dora would preside at his table, and keep his children in order; that Dora, in short, would do everything which the most faithful of sisters could do. The children, too, clung to Dora even more than they were wont to do; and little Daisy, taught by Clem, the nurse-maid, called her mamma, a name which Ben and Burt were quick to catch, and which Dora did not like to hear, especially if the father chanced to be present.

At Dora’s heart there was a constant dread of some impending evil, and when, three weeks after Margaret’s death, she stood one night alone with Dr. West, listening to his farewell, she felt again a longing to throw herself on his protection, and thus she might be saved from danger. But the doctor, though treating her with the utmost tenderness, had never broached the subject of his love since that time at Anna’s grave, where she answered him so indifferently. Her foolish words had hurt him more since than they did then, causing him sometimes to wonder if she did really care for him. If not, or if the germ of her affection was as yet very small, it was better not to press the matter, but let it take its course; and so, trusting that absence would do all that he wished done, he only said good-by as he would have said it to a dear sister, and hardly so, for when he would have kissed the sister, he left Dora unkissed, fancying she would be better pleased with such a parting. His caresses had wearied Anna, and he would not err this way again, so he never touched the lips which would have paid him back so gladly, but merely pressed the little hand which trembled in his, as he said to her, “A year is not very long, Dora. It will pass sooner than we think, and you must not forget me.” Another pressure of the hand, and he was gone, leaving the maiden far more desolate than he dreamed. Could he have known how fast the tears came, when alone in her room she went over with the parting and said to herself, “He does not love me now. My waywardness has sickened him;” could he have seen her when in the early dawn she watched him as he left the house for the last time, he would have turned back, and by taking her with him, or staying himself with her, would have saved her from the dark storm which would bear her down with its mighty force.

But this he did not know, and he went his way to Morrisville, where his mother waited for him, and where Jessie, just returned from Saratoga, sparkled, and flashed, and flitted around him, asking him to write occasionally to her father, and tell them of California.

“Why not write to you?” he replied, and Jessie responded at once:

“To me, then, if you like; I shall be delighted.”

Judge Verner, and Bell, and Mattie Randall all heard this conversation, and so there could be no harm in it, Jessie thought, while the others thought the same, knowing that the light-hearted girl was already corresponding with at least ten gentlemen, for not one of whom did she care in the least. She was a merry little creature, and she made the doctor’s stay at Morrisville much pleasanter than it would otherwise have been, and after he was fairly on the sea, she wrote to Dora a glowing account of “the perfectly splendid time she had with Doctor West, the best and most agreeable man in the world. We are going to correspond, too,” she added in a postscript, “and that will make the eleventh gentleman on my list. I want it an even dozen, and then I’ll be satisfied.”

Dora knew Jessie was a flirt, but this did not lessen the pang with which she read that Jessie, and not herself, was to be the recipient of the doctor’s letters. Never had the autumn seemed so dreary to her before; and when the first wintry snows were falling she shrank, with a nervous dread, from the coming months, with the long, long evenings, when there would be nothing to occupy her time, except, indeed, the children, or the game of chess which she played nightly with her brother.

For one who at first mourned so sorely for the dead, the squire had recovered his spirits wonderfully, and the villagers even hinted that, as is usual with widowers, his dress had undergone a change, being now more youthful and stylish than in former days when Margaret was alive. Young girls blushed when he appeared at any of the social gatherings, while the older ones grew very conscious of themselves, and the mothers were excessively polite and gracious to the squire. He was happier than he used to be, notwithstanding that he went twice a week to Margaret’s grave, and always spoke of her as “my dear wife.” It soothed his conscience to do this, particularly as he felt how much he enjoyed going home from Margaret’s grave, and finding order and quiet and pleasant words, where once there had been confusion and fretful complaints. Dora was very pretty in her mourning-garb, with the simple linen band about her neck and wrists, for she would relieve the sombre aspect of her dress with a show of white, even if it were not the fashion. There was not much color in her cheeks, and her eyes were larger than usual, but to the squire and the children she was very beautiful, moving among them as their household goddess, and always speaking so lovingly and kind.

Once, and only once, there came a letter from Dr. West,—a friendly letter, which any one might read, and which said that he was at Marysville, with his mother, whose health was greatly improved.

“I like the country much,” he wrote, “and if I had with me a few of my Eastern friends I should be willing to settle here for life; but, as it is, I find myself looking forward eagerly to the time when I shall return and meet you all again.”

This passage Squire John read twice, and then glanced again at the “My Dear Dora” with which the letter commenced.

“The doctor is very affectionate,” he said, “calling you ‘Dear Dora,’ though perhaps he has a right, for I remember thinking he admired you.”

Dora was bending over Daisy, whom she was rocking to sleep, and he did not see her blushes as she replied:

“That is a very common way of addressing people, and means nothing at all.”

Perhaps the squire believed this, but he was quite absent-minded the remainder of the day, and in the evening was twice checkmated by Dora, when his usual custom had been to checkmate her.

Dora’s first intention was to answer the doctor’s letter at once, but sickness among the children prevented her from doing so, and when she was at last free to write, the disposition had in a measure left her, and so the answer for which the doctor waited so anxiously was not sent.

About the house at Beechwood the May flowers were blooming, and in the maple-trees the birds were building their nests, cooing lovingly to each other as they did so, and seeming all unconscious of the young heart which within the doors felt that never before had there come to it a spring so full of sorrow and harrowing dread. Jessie and Bell Verner were both there now, and Jessie had brought two immense trunks and a hat-box, as if her intention was to spend the entire summer. She was just as merry and hoydenish as of old, romping with the children in the grass and on the nursery floor, herself the veriest child among them, while her ringing laugh woke all the echoes of the place and made even the Squire join in it, and try to act young again.

Both Jessie and Bell noted the change in Dora, and Jessie asked her outright what it was that made her look so frightened, as if constantly in fear of something; but Dora could not tell what she feared, for she had scarcely dared to define to herself the meaning of Squire Russell’s manner toward her. A stranger would have perceived no difference in his treatment of her now and when his wife was living, but Dora felt the change, and it almost drove her wild, making her one day sharply rebuke the little Daisy for calling her mamma.

“I am not your mother,” she said fiercely. “Your mamma is dead, and I am only Auntie.”

The child looked up in surprise, but called her mamma just the same, while Dora’s eyelids closed tightly over the hot tears she thus kept from falling. That day when Johnnie came home from school at dinner-time he showed unmistakable marks of having been in a fight, and when questioned by his father as to the cause of his black eye, broke out furiously:

“I’ve been a lickin’ Bill Carter, and I’ll do it again if he ever tells such stuff about you! Why, he said you’re a going to get married to that ill-begotten, shoulder-shotten snap-dragon of a Miss Dutton! I told him ’twas the biggest lie, and then he said it wasn’t, that it was true, and she was coming here to be our step-mother; that she would cut off ’Tish’s curls, spank Ben and Burt twice a day, shake Daisy into shoe-strings, and make Jim and me toe the mark,—the hateful!”

“She ain’t, she shan’t,—old nasty Dutton,” and fiery Ben shook his tiny fist at an imaginary bugbear who was to spank him twice a day.

Jessie laughed aloud. Bell looked amused, Dora disturbed, and the Squire very red, as he said to his son:

“You should not mind such gossip, or allow yourself to get into a passion. Time enough to rebel when the step-mother comes. Now go to your room and bathe your eye.”

Johnnie obeyed, muttering as he went:

“There’s only one person I’d have for a step-mother any how, and that’s Aunt Dora. Guy, wouldn’t I raise hob with anybody else!”

“John, leave instantly!” the Squire said sternly, while his face colored crimson, as did Dora’s also, making Bell and Jessie glance curiously at each other, as both thought of the same thing.

In their own room, after dinner, they discussed together the possibility of Dora’s becoming what Johnnie wished her to be, Bell scouting the idea as preposterous, and Jessie insisting that a girl might love Squire Russell well enough to take him with all his children.

“Not that I think Dora will do so,” she said, “for I fancy he is not as much to her taste, even, as he is to mine; and I guess I’d jump in the creek sooner than marry an old widower with half a dozen children.”

What the two sisters were discussing privately in their room was talked openly in the village, some of the people arguing that Dora could not do better, while all agreed that for the Squire it would be a match every way desirable both for his own and his children’s sake. To the Squire himself the story was told one day, the teller hinting that the matter was entirely settled, and asking when the marriage would take place.

With some jocose reply, the Squire rode away, going round to Margaret’s grave, and thence back to his home, where the evening lights were shining, and where Dora, with Daisy in her arms, sat alone in the back parlor, Bell and Jessie having accepted an invitation which she was obliged to decline on account of a bad headache.

There were strange thoughts stirring in the Squire’s breast that night, thoughts which had haunted him for weeks and months, aye, since Margaret died, for he could not forget her words.

“You need not wait long. You and Dora are above people’s gossip, and it will be so much better for the children.”

This was what Margaret had said to him that night when misapprehending her sister just as she was misapprehended, she had told him:

“I have talked with Dora, and she has promised to take my place.”

At first he had been satisfied with matters as they were, and had said that he never could marry and love again. But gradually there had crept into life another feeling, which prompted him to watch Dora constantly as she moved about his house; to miss her when she was away,—to think of her the last at night as well as first in the morning,—to wonder, with a harassing jealousy, if Dr. West cared for Dora, or if she cared for him. No, she did not, he thought, and made himself believe it, else he had never said to her what he did that night, when, with Daisy in her arms, she sat wholly in his power, and was obliged to listen to what was not unexpected, but which, nevertheless, fell like a thunderbolt upon her, turning her into stone, and making her grow faint and sick, just as she did at Saratoga, when the first suspicion dawned upon her that some day John Russell would speak to her what he was speaking now, with one hand on her shoulder and the other on Daisy’s golden head. It was a kind, true, fatherly heart he offered her, and she felt that he meant it all. He cast no reflections upon his departed wife,—he merely said:

“You knew Margaret as well as I. She was not, perhaps, as even-tempered as a more healthy person would have been, but I loved her, remembering always what she was when I took her from her home. You were a little girl, then, Dora, and I never dreamed that I should some time be sueing for your hand just as I had sued for Margaret’s.”

Then he pleaded for his children, who loved her so much; would she be their mother, just as she had promised Margaret she would? Then Dora roused herself, and the face which met the Squire’s view made his heart beat faster as he doubted what it portended.

“I did not think Margaret meant what you ask,” Dora said, her words coming gaspingly. “I thought she meant care for them as I have tried to do, and will do still. I’ll stay with you, John. I’ll be your housekeeper, but don’t ask me to be your wife. I can’t; I’m too young for you; I’m,—O John! O Margaret!” and here the voice broke down entirely, while Dora sobbed convulsively.

Margaret, too, had said she could not be his wife when he asked her. She, too, had said she was too young, and cried, but hers was not like Dora’s crying, and Squire Russell saw the difference, feeling perplexed, but never suspected the truth. It was natural for girls to cry, he thought, when they received an offer of marriage, and so, with both hands on her shoulder, he pleaded again, but this time for himself, telling her in words which his true love made eloquent, how dear she was to him, dearer, if possible, than his early choice, the beautiful Margaret. And Dora believed him, for she knew he was incapable of deception, and that made her pain harder to bear.

“If I had supposed you cared for any one else,” he said, “I should not have sought you, but I did not. Dr. West wrote to you, I know, and I was foolish enough to wish he had not called you his dear Dora, but you did not answer him, and of course there is but one conclusion to be drawn from that. You do not care for him, nor he for you?”

He put this to her interrogatively, but Dora could not speak. Once she thought to tell him what there was between her and Dr. West, but something kept her silent, and so in perfect good faith, kind, honest, truthful John kept on until she answered:

“Please leave me now; I must think, and I am so stunned and bewildered. I’ll answer another time.”

Squire Russell was far too good-natured to stay longer if she did not wish it, and stooping down he kissed his sleeping child, and said:

“Let me kiss baby’s auntie, too?”

Dora offered no resistance, and he touched her forehead respectfully, and then quitted the room. He had kissed her many times when Margaret was living, but no kiss had ever burned her as this one did, for she knew it was not a brother’s kiss, and with a sensation of loathing she passed her hand over the place, and then wiped it with her handkerchief, just as a rustling sound met her ear, and the next moment there was another pleader kneeling at her feet, Johnnie, who had overheard a part of his father’s wooing, and who took it up just where his sire had left it; his stormy, impetuous arguments bearing Dora completely away from herself, so that she hardly knew what she did or said.

“You will be father’s wife, Aunt Dora; you will, you must!” Johnnie began. “I’ve prayed for it every single day since I heard that stuff about old Dutton. I’ve gone to mother’s grave and knelt down there, asking that it might be. Jim and ’Tish pray so, too, for I told ’em to, and I should make Ben and Burt, only I knew they’d tell you; and Auntie, you will! Father’s older than you a lot, I s’pose, but he is so good, and was so kind to mother, even when she plagued him. I never told, but once after you went to Morrisville, she got awful, and lammed him the wust kind,—told him he was fat, and pussy, and awkward, and she was always ashamed of him at watering-places, and a sight more. At last she left the room, and poor papa put his head right in my lap and cried out loud. I cried too, and said to him:

“‘Let’s lick her: I’ll help.’

“But he wouldn’t hear a word. Says he:

“‘Hush, my boy; she’s your mother and my wife. She is not as she used to be. She’s sick and nervous.’

“And when I asked the difference between ugly and nervous, he made me stop, and was just as kind to her at supper-time as ever. Tell me such a man won’t make a good husband! He’ll be splendid, and he’s handsomer than he was,—he has lost that look as if he was afraid something was after him, a henpecked look, Clem called it. Poor father; he has had so little comfort, you must make him happy, Auntie; you will, and you’ll make us all so good. You know how like Cain we behave without you, and how we all mind when you tell us what is right. Will you be father’s wife and help us grow up good?”

He had her face between his warm hands, and was looking at her so earnestly, that for his sake Dora could almost have answered yes, but thoughts of what being his father’s wife involved chilled her through and through, and she answered him:

“Johnnie, I do not believe I can.”

For an instant the boy’s black eyes blazed fiercely at her, and then he angrily exclaimed, “I’ll go to ruin, just as fast as I can go! I’ll smoke to-morrow, if I live, and teach Jim and Ben to do so too! I’ll swear, and when the circus comes next week I’ll run away to that, and take ’Tish with me; I’ll gamble; I’ll drink, and when I’m brought home drunker’n a fool, you’ll know it is your work!”

He looked like a young tiger as he stood uttering these terrible threats, and Dora quailed before his flashing eyes, feeling that much he had said was in earnest. She did not fear his swearing, or gambling, or drinking, for the present, at least, but he might not always act his best; he might grow surly and hard and unmanageable, even by her, unless she yielded to his request, and this she couldn’t do.

“Johnnie,” she began, and something in her voice quieted the excited boy, “would you have me marry your father when I do not love him, and just the thought of being his wife makes me almost sick?”

Johnnie was not old enough to comprehend her meaning. He only felt that it was not a very bad thing to be the wife of a man as good as his father, and he answered her, “You do love him well enough, or you will, and he so affectionate. Why he used to hug and kiss mother every day, even when she was crosser than fury. Of course then he’ll hug you most to death.”

“Oh—h,” Dora groaned, the tone of her voice so indicative of disgust that even Johnnie caught a new idea, which he afterwards acted upon; but he would not yield his point: Dora should be his mother, and he continued the siege until, wearied out with his arguments, Dora peremptorily bade him leave her while she could think in quiet.

Oh, that long, terrible thinking which brought on so racking a headache that Dora was not seen in the parlor on the day following, but lay upstairs in her own room, where, with the bolted door between her and the world outside, she met and battled with what seemed her destiny! One by one every incident connected with Margaret’s death came back to her, and she knew now what the questionings meant, far better than she did then, while she half expected the dead sister to rise before her and reproach her for shrinking from her duty. Then the children came up, a powerful argument swaying her in the direction of Squire Russell. She could do them good; she could train them so much better than another, and John, if she refused him, would assuredly bring another there to rule and govern them. These were the arguments in favor of John’s suit, while on the other side a mighty barrier was interposed to keep her from the sacrifice. Her love for Dr. West, and the words spoken to her at Anna’s grave; and was she not virtually engaged to him?

“Yes,—oh yes, I am!” she cried, and then there came over her all the doubts which had so tortured her since that time in the Morrisville cemetery.

Had he not spoken hastily and repented afterwards? His continued silence on the subject would seem so; and why did he not write to her just as did he to Jessie, who, since coming to Beechwood, had received a letter from him which contained no mention of her, but was full of the light, bantering matter in which he knew Jessie delighted. Dora had heard Jessie say she was going to answer the letter that very day; and suddenly, like a dawn of hope, there flashed over her the determination that she, too, would write and tell him of Squire Russell’s offer; and if he loved her still he would come to save her, or he would write, telling her again how dear she was to him, and that he alone must call her his wife.

“Yes, I’ll do it,” Dora whispered; “I know he is at San Francisco, for Jessie directs there; I’ll write to-day. It shall go in the same mail with hers. I’ll wait two months for his reply, and then, if he answers Jessie and ignores me, I’ll—”

Dora set her teeth firmly together, and her breath came hurriedly, as she paused a moment ere she added, “I’ll marry John.”

And so with a throbbing head Dora wrote to Dr. West, telling him of the proposal and asking what he thought of it. This was all she meant the letter to mean, for her maidenly reserve would not suffer her to betray her real motive if she knew it, but it was more like a pleading cry for help, more like a wail of anguish for one she loved to save her from a fate she had not strength to resist alone, than like a mere asking of advice. The letter was finished, and just after dark, when sure no one could see her, Dora stole from the house unobserved, and hastening to the office, dropped into the box the missive of so much importance to her.

“It is sure to go with Jessie’s,” she said, as she wended her way back, “so if hers is received I shall know that mine was also.”

Alas! Jessie’s had been written the previous night, after that young lady’s return from her visit, and while Dora’s letter was lying quietly in the box at Beechwood awaiting the morning mail, Jessie’s was miles on its way to New York and the steamer which would take it to California a week in advance of the other. But Dora did not know this, neither did she know that it contained the following paragraph:

“There is no news, except the rumor that Squire Russell will marry his pretty sister-in-law. Bell won’t believe a word of it, but some things look like it. Dora is so queer. I had picked her out for you, and believe now that she likes you, though when your name is mentioned, she bites her words off so short and crisp that I am confounded. She is a splendid girl, and will make a grand wife, to say nothing of step-mother.”

Little did Jessie suspect the harm these few comparatively harmless lines would cause, and little did Dora suspect it either, as with a load of pain lifted from her heart and consequently from her head, she sat down by her open window and followed with her mind her letter’s course to far-off California, and then imagined the quick response it would bring back, and which would make her so happy.

“Johnnie must be the medium between Squire Russell and me,” she said. “I’ll tell him to-morrow that his father must wait for my definite reply at least six weeks, and possibly two months. At the end of that time I shall know for sure, and if the doctor does not care, there will be a kind of desperate pleasure in marrying my brother.”

As Dora reached this conclusion there came a well-known knock upon the door, and unfastening the bolt she admitted Johnnie, who had been up many times that day, but had not before been permitted to enter.

“O Auntie,” he cried, “you are better and I’m glad. I didn’t mean what I said about swearing, and drinking, and smoking, and I was so mad at myself that I teased Ben and Burt on purpose till they got hoppin’, and then I lay still while both little Arabs pitched into me. My! didn’t their feet fly like drumsticks as they kicked and struck, and pulled my hair; but when Ben got the big carving-fork, I concluded I’d been punished enough, and so deserted the field! But, Auntie, I do wish you could love father. He has looked so sorry to-day, kind of white about the mouth, and his hand trembled this noon when he carved the turkey. Won’t you, Auntie? I’ve prayed ten times this afternoon that you might, and I begin to have faith that you will. Dr. West, who used to talk to me so good last summer when I was in his Sunday-school class, said we must have faith that God would hear us.”

Dora drew a long, sad sigh, as she wished she too had been taught of Dr. West to pray differently from what she knew she did. Smoothing back John’s soft, dark hair, she said:

“Johnnie, girls cannot make a love in a minute, and this came so suddenly upon me, I must have time to think,—six weeks or two months, and then I will decide. Will you tell your father this for me? Tell him I’m sorry to make him feel badly,—that I like him and always shall, even if I am not his wife—that I know how good, how generous she is,—that he will wait until I know my own mind better, and then if I cannot be his, he must not mind it.”

“I’ll tell him,” Johnnie said, while Dora continued:

“And Johnnie, perhaps it had better be understood that nothing is to be said about it in the mean time,—nothing to me by your father.”

“Yes, I know, I see. I’ll fix it,” Johnnie answered. “I’ll go to father now,” and stooping down, he kissed his aunt tenderly, then suddenly asked, as he looked into her eyes, “You don’t mind my kissing you, do you? That don’t make you sick?”

“No, oh no!” she answered, and Johnnie departed on his strange errand.

Squire Russell sat in his office or reading-room, pretending to look over his evening paper, but his thoughts were really upstairs with Dora, whom he had not seen that day, and whose illness troubled him greatly, for he rightly associated it with his proposal of the previous night. Squire Russell loved Dora with a great, warm, sheltering love, which would shield her from all harm, and unselfishly yield to her everything, but he had not the nice, quick perception of Dr. West, and had he been younger he could never have satisfied the wants of her higher nature as could the rival whose existence he did not suspect. But he loved her very much. He must have her. He could not live without her, he thought, and womanish man that he was, a tear was gathering in his eyes when Johnnie entered the room abruptly, and locking the door, came and stood beside him.

“What do you wish, my boy?” the Squire said kindly, for he was never impatient with his children.

Johnnie hesitated, beginning to feel that his father’s love-affair was a delicate matter for him to meddle with.

“Confound it,” he began at last, “I may as well spit it out, and then let you knock me down, or lick me, or anything you like. Father, I heard what you said to Auntie last night, and what she said to you, and after you was gone I took the floor and beat you all to smash. I said she must be my mother,—she should be my mother, and all that, and set you up, I tell you, till you’d hardly know yourself from my description. To-night I’ve seen her again,—have just come from her room to tell you something she bade me tell.”

Squire Russell had turned very white at first, feeling indignant at his son for presuming to interfere, but this feeling had disappeared now, and he listened eagerly while Johnnie continued:

“She says its sudden; that she can’t make a love in a minute; that she must have six weeks or two months to decide, and then she will tell you sure, and, father, you’ll wait; I know you will, and,—and,—well, I guess I’d hold my tongue,—that is, I wouldn’t keep teasing her, nor say a word; just let her go her own gait, and above all I wouldn’t act lovin’ like, for fear she’d up and vomit. She don’t mind me kissing her, because I’ve no beard, I don’t shave, nor carry a cane. I’m a boy, and you are a whiskered old chap. I guess that’s the difference between us. Father, you’ll wait?”

Squire Russell could not forbear a smile at his son’s novel reasoning, but he was not angry, and it made his child seem nearer, now that both shared the same secret, and were interested in the same cause. Yes, he would wait two, three, or four months if Dora liked, and meantime things should continue as usual in the household.

“And afterward, father?” Johnnie asked. “How about that? If auntie says no, she’ll mean it, and you won’t raise a rumpus, will you? You’ll grin and bear it like a man?”

Yes, the Squire would do all his son required, and before Dora retired for the night, a bit of paper was pushed under her door, on which was written:

“The governor is O. K. He’ll wait and so will I; and if you must say no, he won’t raise hob, but I will. I tell you now I’ll raise the very roof! Don’t say no, Auntie, don’t!

It was rather embarrassing next morning at the breakfast-table, but Johnnie threw himself into the gap, talking loudly and rapidly to his father of the war meeting to be held that night, wishing he was a man, so he could enlist, and predicting, as did many a foolish one at that period, the spring of ’61, that the immense force of 75,000, called for by the President, would subjugate the South at once.

The Squire talked very little, and never once glanced at Dora, who in her heart blessed both Jessie and Johnnie, the latter for engaging his father’s attention and the former for talking so constantly to herself and Bell.

Dora was very white and nervous, but this was imputed to her illness of the previous day, and so neither Bell nor Jessie dreamed of what had passed between her and their host, or how her heart was aching with the terrible fear of what might be in store for her.

It had been arranged that the Misses Verner should remain at Beechwood for a long time, and as Bell thought four weeks came under that definition she began to talk of returning home as early as the first of June; but with a look of terror which startled both the girls, Dora begged of them to stay.

“Don’t leave me alone!” she cried, clasping Bell’s hand pleadingly. “I shall die if you do! Oh, stay,—you would if you knew—”

She did not say what, and Bell gazed at her wonderingly, but decided at last to stay a few weeks longer. Nothing could please Jessie better, for she did not particularly like Morrisville, and she did like Beechwood very much. She liked the lake view, the hills, and the people, and she liked the six noisy, frolicsome children, with their good-humored sire, who treated her much as he would have treated a playful, teasing child not his own, but a guest. Many were the gambols she had with Ben and Burt, and little Daisy, who loved her almost as much as they loved Dora, while upon the matter-of-fact Squire she played off many a saucy trick, keeping him constantly on the alert with plots and conspiracies, and so making the time seem comparatively short, while he waited for Dora’s decision. But to Dora there was nothing which brought comfort or diverted her for a moment from the agonizing suspense which grew more and more dreadful as the days went swiftly by, bringing no answer to the letter sent to Dr. West.

“Is it anything in particular you are expecting?” Johnnie asked one day, when she turned so white and shivered, as he returned from the post-office, with letters for all except herself.

“Yes,—no! Oh, I don’t know what I expect,” she answered, and leaning her head on Johnnie’s shoulder, she wept silently, while the boy tried to comfort her, and became from that moment almost as anxious that she should have a letter as she seemed herself.

Regularly each day at mail-time he was at the office, and if there chanced to be a letter for Dora, as there sometimes was, running to her eagerly, but saying always to himself as the weary, disappointed look remained the same:

“The right one has not come.”

No, the right one had not come, and now it was more than seven weeks since the night when Dr. West had been written to.

Bell and Jessie were really going home at last, and their trunks stood in the hall ready for the early morning train. Dora had exhausted every argument for a longer stay, but Bell felt that they must go.

“They would come again in the autumn, perhaps, or Dora should visit them. She would need rest by that time, sure,” Bell said, and Dora shuddered as she thought how she might never know rest or happiness again, save as she found them in the discharge of what she was beginning to believe was her imperative duty.

“Letters! letters!” shouted Johnnie, running up the walk, his hand full of documents, one of which he was closely inspecting. Spelling out the place where it was mailed, he exclaimed, as he entered the room, “That’s from the doctor, for it says ‘San Francisco.’”

Instantly both Jessie and Dora started forward to claim it, the hot blood dyeing the cheeks of the latter, but subsiding instantly, and leaving only a livid hue as Jessie took the letter, saying:

“It is for me.”

Sinking back in her chair, Dora pressed her hands tightly together, as Jessie broke the seal and read, partly to herself and partly aloud, that message from Dr. West.

“Is still in San Francisco, at the hotel, which is crowded with guests, and will compare very favorably with the best houses in New York City. Begins to think of coming home in the autumn. Mother’s health improved. Was pleased to get my letter,” and so on.

This was the substance of what Jessie read, until she reached a point where she stopped suddenly, and seemed to be considering; then turning to Johnnie, she asked him to do for her some trifling service, which would take him from the room. When he was gone, she said to Dora:

“Maybe you’ll scold, but it cannot now be helped. In my letter to Dr. West, I said, or hinted, at what everybody is talking about,—that is, you know, about your marrying Squire Russell, and this is the doctor’s reply: ‘What you wrote of Miss Freeman took me by surprise, but it will be a grand thing for the Squire. Tell her that if she decides to mother those six children, she has my best wishes for her happiness. You say you had picked her out for me. She would probably tell you differently, as she has seemed to dislike rather than like me, and according to your own story, bites her words off crisp and short when I am mentioned.’”

“O Jessie, how could you? What made you tell him that? It was cruel of you, when I do like him,” Dora cried, her face for an instant crimsoning with passion and then growing deathly white as she felt her destiny crushing down upon her without a hope of escape.

“Because you do,” Jessie retorted, anxious to defend herself. “You are just as spiteful as can be when I tease you about him, and I don’t care!”

Jessie was vexed at herself for having told Dr. West what she had, and vexed at Dora for resenting it; but she never dreamed of the terrible pain throbbing in Dora’s heart, as with a mighty effort she forced back the piteous, despairing cry rising to her lips, and brought there a smile instead, saying pleasantly:

“Well, never mind it now. It does not matter; only Dr. West has been so kind to us in sickness that I ought to like him, and do. Does he say what time he will be home?”

Jessie was thoroughly deceived, and after ascertaining that he merely spoke of coming in the autumn, went to her room, as there were a few things she must yet do for her morrow’s journey.