More than anything else in the world Marion wished to be alone that afternoon. If it were possible she wished to understand herself. She closed the study blinds, and, in the dim light drew Roger’s study chair to the table; and, sitting down, bent forward, leaning her head on the table.

What did she wish to understand? She wished to know if the years had burnt out that impulse of friendship, or love, she had, then, toward Roger’s friend, and her own friend; she was as light-hearted to-day, but for the shame of it, as if she had never known him so pleasantly and familiarly; her excitement over the letter was—what was it?

If he should enter now she would be startled; she would be startled because of that shame, because of those words that had spoken the truth to him; she had read his letters to Judith week after week all these years; they were delightful letters, he put himself into them; Judith had written him that she always showed them to her; she did not often read the letters Judith wrote to him.

If she knew that he were coming back to—but, why should he? He had not cared beyond friendliness then; there was no reason that he should care beyond friendliness to-day. She was just the same; not any prettier, not any more attractive; she was only a busy worker in her brother’s small parish. Girls always had lovers, she supposed; before she had a thought of it David Prince asked her to marry him, and she refused instantly with no thought but surprise; there had been no one else; she was twenty-one when she thought she cared for Don Mackenzie, she was twenty-six now; an impulsive girl then, a self-possessed woman now; that had been a golden experience; if there were any gold in her it had been tried in that fire.

He was her girlish ideal; he was not her woman’s ideal. Perhaps she was disappointed in him.

“Marion, Marion,” called a voice in the hall; a voice Marion loved; Aunt Affy’s voice.

“O, Aunt Affy,” springing toward the figure in the gray dress and pretty gray bonnet, “how did you know I wanted you more than I ever did in my life?”

“I was sent, may be,” was the simple reply.

“I am sure you were,” said Marion, drawing her into the study and seating her on the lounge. “Now give me your bonnet.”

“But, I can’t stay a minute,” Aunt Affy protested; “Cephas had to come to the blacksmith’s, and he brought me. Rody hasn’t been so well all day, and I hate to leave her. I came to see the minister.”

“The minister’s sister will have to do this time.”

“I’m afraid she won’t. Rody has something on her mind; I thought perhaps he would come to see her and find out. She looks queer at me and will not speak. Mrs. Evans is staying with her. She hasn’t worked too hard this summer; she couldn’t; I’ve done a good deal, and we’ve had one of the Draper girls come in two days every week. I know it isn’t that; it’s her mind. But I’ll stay content till Cephas comes for me. Now, what is, deary?”

“It isn’t anything; only I wanted to hear you talk.”

“Bless the child,” ejaculated Aunt Affy; “I never talked in my life.”

“No, you never do; you only breathe out your spirit and your experiences; they find words for themselves; I truly believe you have nothing to do with the words; they come.”

Aunt Affy laughed; she thought so herself.

“Did you ever want to do anything different from your life? Were you always as satisfied as you are now?” asked Marion, taking Aunt Affy’s hard-working hand into her own pretty fingers.

Then Aunt Affy laughed again. What a tumult her far-away girlhood had been. Did girls now-a-days think so much and have such confusing thoughts and times?

“I had a longing to do a certain kind of work—very practical; and the only relief was praying to be satisfied with the having and doing it. That was a very holy state of mind, you think. I used to think so, too. Would it have been a holy state of mind if I had run next door to see my bosom friend and talked to her continually about it? My praying was simply to unburden myself. I had no bosom friend to talk to; if I had I might have told her about it instead of praying about it. And being devout I talked to God about it, instead of falling into reverie as one less devout would have done. I am not confident all my praying was prayer,” she answered, shaking her head with its two long white curls.

“Yes,” said Marion, who had felt this dimly about her own praying.

“But it held this inestimable blessing—it moved me to study about prayer, as no other experience would have done. And then, as the years went on, the comfort of what I found to believe was so satisfying that I forgot, for the while, the certain thing I was longing for. And then as it was not granted, I began to think the longing had been kept alive and craving that I might be kept alive and craving about prayer. God’s way of answering is as well worth studying as our way of asking.”

“I should think it might be worth more,” said Marion.

“I am glad to hear you say that. Some too introspective people regard more their way of asking—and in that way wander about in the dark while his way of answering is light about them.”

“But then,” Marion said, argumentatively, “don’t you see that unless your prayer were granted what you were learning would not be true; that is, if the promises are to be taken literally and exactly.”

“I do not always know about ‘literally and exactly.’ That depends upon just where we are. A child’s faith may need ‘literally and exactly.’ You and I may be growing into—not a less confident, but a more intelligent faith.”

“Let me read you something. Dr. Parkhurst says—” Marion opened the volume and read:—“‘The longings of the human spirit have their own particular beatitude, and, better than any other interpreters, make clear the meaning of the Holy Word.’”

“Read it again,” said Aunt Affy. “I’ve been all through that.”

Marion read it again, very clearly, then laid aside the book.

“But how do you know if you do give up?” she asked, feeling her own will strong within her.

“There is a great deal in your question. To give up heartily and thoroughly is a rare thing to do. It is more than giving up praying about it. It is even more than giving up wishing for it. It is giving up the place in your heart, the plan in your life that held it; it is so giving up that you can put something else in its stead. It is filling that place so full that the old desire can never get back into it again. And it is doing it of your own free will. It is like what the people might have done by taking God back again as King, and refusing to have Saul. They had the opportunity to do it.”

“Aunt Affy, how have you learned to be so sure about things? You remind me of another thing Dr. Parkhurst says: ‘A Christian has more than the natural resources of thought and action.’”

“So we have. I knew nothing but that God cared for me. And I was eager, impetuous, impatient, wilful, eager for him to walk my way, in the way I should tell him about. It was years and years before his Word became to me the delight, the plain command, warning, rebuke, comfort, it is to-day. But I studied night and day with my longing heart; and he blessed every natural longing; he took not one away; he took each into his keeping and blessed it.”

“Does it take years?” faltered Marion. “I want to learn something to-day.”

“You may learn something to-day; you cannot learn all to-day. Yesterday I opened my Bible to a passage dated thirty years ago; I remember the night I marked it; I was staggered, dismayed at something that had happened to me, something that I thought God would never let happen. I read through tears; I was comforted although the words meant little to me; I was comforted as a child is comforted, snug in its mother’s arms, when the mother does not speak one word. Yesterday, being in a strait again, I read these same marked words; again they were dull and dry; I asked God to tell me what he meant.”

“Thirty years ago did you ask him to tell you?”

“No, I did not think of that. I thought I would be comforted some other way. I had not grown up to the understanding of to-day. You know there’s a natural growing up to understanding God’s words. It took the happenings of these thirty years to make me understand; God worked through them. He makes us grow through the sunshine and rain of his happenings. God has to wait for our slow growing. (And I wish to impress upon you just here, that unless you read and remember and understand the Bible stories you cannot expect to find the lessons for your own life. Superficial reading will not bring out the points; one of his ways of teaching is through the natural method of your own study and memory.)

“‘Therefore they inquired of the Lord further.’ That further helped me through a hard time. The story is this: God had chosen a king for his people, told Samuel all about it, and sent him to pour the anointing oil upon his head and to kiss him; and now when Samuel called the people together at Mizpeh, and caused all the tribes to come near to choose a king for them, and the tribe of Benjamin was taken, then the family in Benjamin, then Saul, the son of Kish, thus confirming the Lord’s choice and Samuel’s mission in the anointing, and then the most astounding thing happened. Saul, the chosen of the Lord, the young man whom the Judge of Israel had anointed and kissed, could not be found. What would you think if you believed that God had bidden you do something, and had confirmed it in such a special, satisfying, convincing manner, and then suddenly you could go no further—it was all taken out of your hands. The prophet sought for Saul and could not find him. Would you not be tempted to say—would you not really say to yourself, and to the Lord, I have been mistaken; I went ahead to do God’s bidding in all the confidence of my faith, and before all the people I am ashamed; it is proven that God did not bid me, that my faith was presumptive, for the time has come to go on, and I cannot go on—the work is not to be done. It looks as if I had deceived myself; God has allowed me to believe something that is not true. Could anything be more heart-breaking? How could God treat you like that when you believed him so, and were so in earnest? Would you have the heart to inquire further? They asked if the man should yet come hither. Samuel had done all he could. The Lord answered, telling them plainly where the man had hidden himself. Oh, these hidden people, the Lord knows about. He is in all their hiding places. Suppose Samuel had stopped, ashamed before the people, angry, humiliated before the Lord. There had to be this last trial of faith. At the last eager, sure moment God may have a new test of faith for us. Is there a hiding place in one of your last, sure moments? Do not fail before it. God’s will is hidden away in it.”

“Aunt Affy, you do not know what you have done for me,” said Marion, solemnly, “I have just been deciding something for myself. I was forgetting that God might have a will about it; that there was any further in it.”

“And here comes Cephas,” Aunt Affy replied, rising; “I know the rattling of those chains—I came in the farm wagon because it was easier than for him to hitch the horses to the carriage. I’m thankful enough if I’ve been of any help to you,” she added, touching Marion’s forehead with her sweet, old, happy lips.

“Shall I send Roger as soon as he comes home?”

“Yes, and Judith. Judith didn’t come yesterday, and Rody kept asking for her.”

“It may be late. They have gone to Meadow Centre.”

“No matter if it is midnight. Rody didn’t sleep last night. She talked in her sleep, and has been muttering all day; I wouldn’t have left her only I wanted to see the minister alone before he saw her.”

The chains of the farm wagon rattled into the lane. Marion, on the piazza, watched the old lovers drive away.

XXII. AUNT AFFY’S EVENING.

“I don’t want any supper,” complained Aunt Rody, rising from the supper table and staggering toward the sitting-room door. “I’m too full to eat; too full of deceit; you are all deceiving me.”

“Now, Rody,” protested Cephas, buttering his big slice of bread, with a vigorous touch.

“All, every one of you,” she said with a wail, turning with a slow effort to face the supper-table; “you have deceived me all your life, and Affy has, and Joe, and Judith, and Doodles would if he knew how. Perhaps he does in a dog’s way, which isn’t half so tremendous as the human way.”

Joe burst into a laugh, which Aunt Affy’s look instantly silenced.

“Poor Rody,” she sighed.

In the twilight, after the dishes were done, the two old sisters sat together on the piazza; Rody had insisted upon wiping the dishes, and as she sat upright in her straight-backed chair, she rubbed her fingers dry with the brown gingham apron she had forgotten to take off.

She rubbed her fingers with an unceasing motion, muttering to herself. Affy looked off into the twilight, her hands still in her lap. Joe went whistling up the road to the village; Cephas, in meditative attitude, in his shirt-sleeves, with his straw hat pushed to the back of his head, leaned over the gate.

“All of you, all of you,” mumbled the breaking voice, “from my youth up.”

“Cephas thinks it would be a good thing to sell the milk to the Dutchman that has bought the Elting farm,” began Affy, watching the effect of her words. “Four cents a quart. And we would be saved the churning and washing all the milk things. If Joe goes away to learn a trade we shall have nobody to churn. What do you think, Rody?”

The drooping head lifted itself, the fingers with the gingham fold were held with a loosening hand; sharply and shrilly Aunt Rody replied: “That’s always the way; you and Cephas are always putting your heads together to cheat me out of something. Not a quart of that milk shall go. Joe shall stay and churn. Mother never sold her milk to a Dutchman for four cents a quart. What would we do for butter, I’d like to know.”

“Buy it.”

“Buy it,” she repeated, mockingly; “nobody on the Sparrow place ever paid money for butter.”

“But Cephas thinks—,” began Aunt Affy, patiently.

“Tell Cephas to stop thinking,” replied the weakly imperative voice.

Twilight darkened into night; but Rody refused to go in and go to bed; she was comfortable, she liked that chair, she liked the stars, she could breathe better out here in the night air; she did not want to go into her bedroom, somebody had struck her a blow in there.

So they stayed, the air blew damp, Aunt Affy brought a shawl and pinned it about the stooping shoulders; Cephas came and sat down on the step of the piazza with his hat on his knee, giving uneasy glances now and then at the muffled, still figure in the chair.

“It’s getting dark,” suggested Affy, rising and standing before the bent figure with its head turned stiffly to one side.

“And damp—these nights are chilly for old bones,” replied Cephas.

“There’s a light in the house,” persuaded Affy, “and it’s dark out here.”

“And the bed is so comfortable,” added Cephas; “guess I’ll go in.”

He arose and went in.

“I’m going, too,” encouraged Affy. “Come, Rody, you may sleep in my bed.”

“I won’t sleep in my bed; are you sure there’s nobody to strike me in your room?” she questioned like a frightened child.

“Nobody but me. Come, Rody,” she urged, gently.

Placing a hand on each arm of the chair, the old woman lifted herself to her feet; then she felt out in the darkness for something to lean on; Affy took her arm and led her in. The lamp was burning on the round table where the New York Observer was piled; Doodles slept on his cushion on the lounge.

“I’ll sit here awhile,” said Cephas, pulling his spectacle case from his vest pocket. “I haven’t read the paper to-night.”

“I’ll sit here, too,” said Rody, rousing herself to a decision. “Somehow I don’t want to go to bed. I don’t believe it’s nine o’clock yet. I wish the clock would strike. I wish something would make a noise.”

“It’s a quarter of nine,” replied Affy, lowering her sister slowly down into her chair. “It will soon strike.”

“Take this thing off,” commanded Rody, tugging at the shawl with her weak right hand. “You bundle me up as if I was a baby.”

“There’s a carriage coming,” said Cephas, bending his head and half shutting his eyes to listen; “he’s come, Affy.”

“Who’s come?” demanded Aunt Rody, in shrill tone. “Who comes at this time of night?”

“The minister; he was coming to bring Judith for an hour or two,” Cephas answered, reassuringly. “She didn’t come yesterday. Don’t you want to see her?”

“Just for a look; I don’t want her to stay, I don’t want anybody to stay.”

Roger Kenney and Judith entered quietly; Judith shrank from the old woman as she stood for an instant beside her chair. Roger drew a chair nearer and took Aunt Rody’s hand into his own. The nerveless hand lay in his as if glad of the warmth and strength; as he talked, Roger clasped and unclasped his hand over hers that she might feel the motion and life of his fingers.

“I’m glad to see you, Aunt Rody,” he said in a voice which was a tonic.

“I’m glad to see you,” she replied, with the flicker of a smile about her lips.

“‘Let not your heart be troubled.’”

“It is troubled; it is full of trouble. It’s Affy and Cephas; they are deceiving me. They want to get married and deceive me more and more.”

“Shall I tell you how we’ll stop that?” asked Roger, bending confidentially toward her.

“Yes, do. Tell me quick.”

“Let me marry them, and then you will never think they are deceiving you again. What is the reason they are deceiving you now?”

“Because they think I stand between them; they think I’ve always stood between them,” she said, piteously; “but I never did. I was seeking their good.”

“But don’t you think you have sought their good long enough?” he asked persuasively.

“Yes; I’ve worn myself out for their good. I’m worn out now; they’ll have to do for themselves, after this.”

“Who will take care of Affy after you are gone?”

“I don’t know; I’m sure I don’t know. She doesn’t know how to take care of herself.”

“But she was your little baby; you are sorry not to have her taken care of.”

“Oh, yes, I’m sorry; I’m very sorry.”

Affy dropped on the lounge beside Doodles, and was crying like a child; Judith went to her and put both her strong young arms about her and her warm cheek to hers. Cephas cleared his throat, then busied himself burnishing his spectacles with a piece of old chamois.

“Somebody must take care of her, Cephas knows how best,” said the minister with firmness, rubbing the cold, limp fingers.

“Yes, Cephas knows how best,” she quavered “Come here, Cephas, and promise the minister you will always take care of Affy.”

“Go, Aunt Affy,” said Judith, in her strong, young voice, “go and be married while Aunt Rody knows it. She’ll change her mind to-morrow—”

“Oh, I can’t, I can’t,” sobbed Aunt Affy, “with Rody so near dying, how can I? It’s too hurried and dreadful.”

“It’s too beautiful,” said Judith; “that is all she can do for you; do let her do it, dear Aunt Affy.”

“Come, Affy,” said Cephas solemnly, “the Lord’s time has come.”

“Perhaps it has,” sobbed Affy, trembling from head to foot, as Judith led her across the room.

Roger arose and stood before the old man and the old woman; her head drooped so that one long curl rested on his shoulder.

“I’d ought to have a coat on,” said Cephas with an ashamed face; “it isn’t proper for a man to be married in his shirt-sleeves.”

“And let me fix up a little,” coaxed Aunt Affy; “this is my old muslin, all faded out.”

“Oh, don’t spoil anything,” Judith besought; “see how she is watching you. Aunt Rody, don’t you want Uncle Cephas to take care of Aunt Affy?”

“Yes, yes, oh, yes. Has he promised the minister?” she asked with tremulous anxiety.

“Listen, and you will hear him promise. Joe, come here,” Roger called to the step in the kitchen.

Joe came to the threshold, threw off his hat, and stood amazed.

“Aunt Rody, put their hands together,” said Judith, taking Aunt Rody’s hands as the old bride and bridegroom stretched their hands toward her.

“Did I do it?” she asked, as she felt the touch of both hands. “Is it done for always?”

“Yes,” said the minister, “you’ve done it. Now, listen to every word.”

“Has he promised to take care of Affy?” Rody asked, peering up into Roger’s face.

“Yes, Rody, with all my heart and soul and strength,” answered the old man, with the light of communion Sunday in his face.

The curl drooped lower on Cephas’ shirt-sleeve; Judith stood near Aunt Affy.

The solemn, glad words were spoken, the prayer uttered, the benediction given; Aunt Affy and Uncle Cephas were married.

“Let me kiss you, Rody,” said Affy, through her tears.

“I kissed you when you were a baby,” said Rody. “You were a nice little baby. Mother said I must always think of you first.”

“Now, you will go to bed,” said Affy. “It’s after nine o’clock.”

“Not in my room. I’ll go in your room. Don’t you go away all night. Keep the light burning, and don’t you go.”

“No; I’ll stay, Rody; we will take care of you always, Cephas and I.”

Judith stayed that night; Aunt Rody slept well, and arose in the morning at her usual early hour. She made no allusion to the marriage that day, nor as long as she lived.

XXIII. VOICES.

The three were in the study that Sunday afternoon that the Meadow Centre minister exchanged with Roger Kenney; the minister, the hostess, and the girl at boarding-school. The boarding-school girl had a book in her lap with her finger between the leaves, listening.

“Mr. King talks as though he had never had any one to talk to before,” Judith thought as she watched the two and listened.

His conversation was filled with bits of information, with incident, with a thought now and then, absorbingly interesting to a school-girl.

Roger loved people better than he loved books; Judith had not outgrown her books, and grown into loving people. The Meadow Centre minister was a chapter in a most fascinating book; he was the hero of a story; he was not a being of flesh and blood like Roger. She was afraid every moment the book would shut and she would read no more of his story; “to be continued” would end this chapter, and then she might never see the end of the book.

“‘Conversation is not the road leading to the house,’” he quoted, “‘but a by-path where people walk with pleasure.’”

“I think it leads to the house,” replied Judith, quickly, “if people are real and sincere. What does lead to the house if conversation does not?”

“Deeds,” suggested Marion.

“But we can’t do deeds every minute,” persisted Judith; “how could we do deeds sitting here this afternoon.”

“We have done them,” said Mr. King; “we are resting in a by-path.”

“But we want to get to the house,” insisted Judith.

“Loitering by the way is pleasant; through the by-way we may learn the way to the house.”

“Marion, that reminds me of Cousin Don,” Judith said, suddenly; “we know him only through by-ways.”

“Tell me about Cousin Don,” said the minister, interestedly.

Cousin Don was a story Judith loved to tell.

“You expect to find him unchanged after all these years—the time in his life when a man changes?” he inquired, astonished. “Is that the way you understand human nature?”

“Perhaps I do not understand human nature at all. But I have his letters.”

“By-ways—they do not lead to the house,” he replied.

“But they can,” said Judith, vexed.

“Oh, yes, they can.”

“And I know they do; don’t you, Marion?”

“In this case, I hope so,” Marion answered; “I don’t see how people can help being like their letters.”

“Or their letters like them?” corrected Judith.

“Then how is it we are disappointed in people?” Mr. King questioned; “is it only our lack of insight?”

“People change,” said Marion, with slow emphasis; “if we were with them all the time we would see the little changes that lead the way to the great changes. People are even disappointed in themselves; I am.”

“So am I,” he answered sincerely; “I fall below my own ideal often enough; if anybody cared enough for me to be disappointed in me they would have reason enough.”

“I don’t believe they would,” thought Judith.

“Mr. King,” Marion began doubtfully, “do not answer me if my question is intrusive; but I would like to know how you read the Bible for yourself.”

“That is a coincidence,” exclaimed Mr. King; “as I was driving along this morning a question came to me that I never thought of asking myself before: suppose someone asks you to-day how you study the Bible for yourself, what will you say?”

“How wonderful,” both girls said in the same breath.

“So I told myself what I would say. One of my ways when I am in special need of a word from my heavenly Father is to ask him to give it to me, and then I am sure to find it in my reading. Often I open and find it; often and often I find it in the chapter that comes next in my daily reading. Asking the Holy Spirit to open your eyes to see his special word to you in that special need is the safest way and the quickest for me. I am assured then that I shall learn that day’s lesson in that day’s place. The truth I need most has never failed to come.”

“That is a very simple way,” Marion said. “As simple as a child asking his mother for something she has promised. The only hindrance is self-will.”

“Oh, dear, that hinders everything,” sighed Judith, who was battling with the suggestion from within herself that perhaps her boarding-school days were over and she ought to go back and help nurse Aunt Rody. The aunts had been so kind to her mother when she was a homeless little girl, and to herself when she was a homeless little girl. She had kept it out of her prayers ever since she had thought of it. If only she had not thought of it. Aunt Affy would never ask her to give up her studies and her happy home to bury herself with three old people.

“Are you far enough along in life to know that?” asked Mr. King, giving the girl of eighteen a glance of keen interest.

“I think I was born knowing it,” said Judith. “Do you know about anybody who wanted to do right and had a will of his own—”

“Oh, yes; they are plenty of us. Three of us in this room,” he laughed.

“But I meant some one in the Bible, for then we can know certainly what happened to him.”

“Yes, I find a king who leagued himself with another king to go to war; but he was not satisfied that he was in the way of obedience, and he said to the other king, ‘Inquire, I pray thee, at the word of the Lord to-day,’ and the other king gathered four hundred men, his own prophets, and inquired of them what he should do. With one voice they said, ‘Go up; for the Lord shall deliver it into the hands of the king.’ Four hundred answers to his prayer; the Lord’s command four hundred strong. But the king who believed in the true God had not had his answer; it was the will of the true God he sought. He said, ‘Is there not here, besides, a prophet of the Lord that we might inquire of him?’ The answer was, ‘There is yet one man by whom we may inquire of the Lord.’ If there is one way of knowing the Lord’s will, there is no excuse for us; we may know it. Four hundred voices of self-will are no reason, and no excuse, for not knowing it. This king who believed in God heard the one voice of God—and disobeyed it. He joined himself in battle with the king who trusted in the four hundred voices of his self-will. And the battle went against him; God had told him so. He believed God afterward; so will you and I if we disobey. He went to battle as though God had not spoken.”

“Was he killed?” asked Judith, fearful some trouble might fall upon her if she listened to the voice of self-will.

“No, he cried out, and the Lord helped him, and moved his enemies to depart from him. As he returned to his house in peace, a seer met him, and said, ‘For this thing wrath is upon thee from the Lord.’”

“‘For this thing,’” repeated Judith. “For inquiring of the Lord, learning his will, and then believing the voice of the four hundred who gave him his own way. Oh, dear, I wish those four hundred would never speak.”

“There is but one way to silence them; listen to God’s voice above them all.”

“But it is so hard,” cried Judith, impetuously.

“Do not choose the easy way of obedience. Choose God’s way, and let me tell you one of his secrets; his way is always easier than we think.”

To hide the tears which would not be kept back Judith hastily left the study; he did not know, nobody could know, what obedience would cost her; life at the parsonage was so different; Roger and Marion were young with her, and Aunt Rody and Aunt Affy, and Uncle Cephas were so old; they had lived their lives, and their days went on with a long-drawn-out sameness; nothing ever happened to them, they were not looking forward to anything, there would be no study, no new books, no music, no getting near the loveliest things in the world; it was barrenness and dreariness, it was like death; the parsonage was hope, and youth, and love and life, with the best things yet to come. “It will stifle me to go back; I shall die of homesickness, I shall choke to death.”

Cousin Don had a right to her, he was her guardian cousin. Would he not have a right to come and take her away? But her mother—what would her mother choose for her to do?

They had been so kind to her mother.

“I will go and stay—a week,” she resolved, tears rushing afresh; “but I miss Marion when I stay one single night.”

At the supper-table she announced with reddened eyelids and a voice that would not be steady that she thought she would go to Aunt Affy’s before evening service and stay over night; Uncle Cephas had told her that morning that Aunt Affy was very tired.

“Must you go?” asked Marion. “But I know they need you. Mrs. Evans said they couldn’t get any one, and Aunt Rody was in bed to-day.”

“Perhaps I’ll find it easier than I think,” said Judith.

“As soon as they find a nurse you will come back,” encouraged Marion.

During the walk through the village and to the Sparrow place Judith’s courage all oozed away; she grew so faint-hearted that she thought she was faint; she stopped for a glass of water at the well where the lilies had come, and went upstairs a moment to talk to Nettie, still helpless in her invalid chair.

“The minister came to see me this afternoon,” Nettie greeted her; “he read and prayed and told me things. Has he told you anything?”

“Yes, and I almost wish he had not. I have to do right things—whether I want to or not.”

“Are you doing one now? One new one. You look so.”

“I am on the way to it.”

“Where are you going?”

“Literally and figuratively I am on the way to it. I am giving up study and everything else to go and take care of Aunt Rody.”

“How splendid of you. I knew you would do something real some day,” Nettie said with enthusiasm. “You haven’t been my ideal for nothing. Mother has kept telling me I might be disappointed in you; but I knew I never should.”

After that how could she feel faint-hearted?

“O, Judith,” said Aunt Affy, meeting her on the piazza, “how did you know I couldn’t do without you any longer? Joe has gone for the doctor; Rody has had another spell.”

In her own little room that night the girl knelt on the strip of rag carpet, and, with her head buried in the pink and white quilt, prayed that the voices of her self-will might be lost in the voice of the Holy Spirit. The coming back was even harder than she feared; Mr. King had not told her God’s truth when he said: “His way is always easier than we think.”

The thought that she was bravely doing a hard thing did not brace her to the bearing of it; she was not bearing it at all; she was living through it.

Roger had not once told her she was brave, Marion was not more than usually sympathetic; the neighbors were taking her coming back as a matter of course—something to be expected; they would have blamed her if she had not come; Aunt Rody every day was less fretful toward her, more satisfied with her nursing; Aunt Affy busy in kitchen and dairy, with the new importance of her marriage, and being for the first time mistress in her own house, seemed forgetful that the girl had come from any brighter life, forgetful that she had ever left the old place and its homespun ways, and, most discouraging of all, forgetful that any other help in household or sick-room was desired or might be had by searching and for money. For the first time in her life Aunt Affy was selfish. In her own contentment she forgot, or did not think it possible that the girl of eighteen could be discontented.

Judith remembered that Harriet Hosmer had said she could be happy anywhere with good health and a bit of marble.

But suppose she had not had her bit of marble?

These days were the history of her summer of stories.

The doctor told them that Aunt Rody might be helpless in bed for months; she might gain strength and sit in her chair again. He had known such instances. That was in the first week; in the second week he gave them no hope.

The stricken old woman was alive; that was all she was to Judith: an old woman who was not dead yet.

Judith was pitiful; she loved her with a compassionate tenderness as she would have loved any helpless, stricken thing; but she was hardly “Aunt Rody” any longer.

She was as helpless as a baby, with none of a baby’s innocence, or loveliness or lovingness; there was no hope for this gray-haired, wrinkled mass of human flesh, but in casting off this veil of the flesh, no hope but in death. It was as if death were alive before Judith’s eyes, and within touch of her hand.

She had no memory of Aunt Rody as the others had, to give affection to; there was only this. There was scarcely any memory for her gratitude to cling to.

There was one comfort left; she was not afraid of her now.

If she had stayed with her, instead of being at home at the parsonage, she might have grown up to love and understand her; instead she had grown away from love and understanding.

She dared not think of release coming through Aunt Rody’s death. That would be desiring her death. Desiring one’s death in one’s heart was—.

There was no hope but in Cousin Don.

XXIV. “I HAVE ALWAYS THOUGHT YOU CARED.”

“Judith, don’t stay in this little close entry when all out-doors is calling to you,” said Aunt Affy.

“But I thought she might stir and want something,” replied Aunt Rody’s nurse; “she looks up so patient and pitiful when she wants something.”

“My work is all done; I’ll sit here; you are losing your color, child. What will your Cousin Don say to me when he comes home to claim you?”

“He will not come home to do that,” said Judith, rising reluctantly to give Aunt Affy her low chair. “I have a foreboding that something is happening to him. He never forgot me before.”

“Forebodings come out of tired head and feet and back. I am allowing you to do too much. This is Saturday afternoon and your play time. The baking is done, and now that we are rid of churning—what would poor Rody say to me for selling the milk and making no butter? I feel that I am ‘deceiving’ her at every turn about the house. Run up stairs and put on the blue muslin you look so cool in, and go out in the hammock and forget the responsibility that takes away your appetite and gives you big eyes. Dear child, death must come. It is the voice of the Lord calling Rody. You know what George MacDonald says: Death is only going to sleep when one is downright sleepy. Rody is downright sleepy. Think how she sleeps half the time, poor old soul.”

“Do you think she is glad to be ‘downright sleepy’?”

“Aren’t you, always, when your night comes?”

“But, Aunt Affy, she hasn’t been—she wasn’t—I did not think she cared.”

“Her light has almost gone out, sometimes, I do believe. But it’s there, burning. She has a spark of real faith that never went out. She wasn’t as loving in her ways as she was in her heart. Now, don’t stand another minute. I want you to go to church to-morrow, too. John Kenney is out on the piazza waiting for you; he’s come to the parsonage to spend Sunday.”

In an instant Judith was all light and color. John Kenney was the kind of a friend that no one else in the world was; as grave as the minister himself, at times, as book loving, and yet as full of fun and frolic as a boy; he was taller than Roger, and handsome; Roger was fine, but he was not handsome; she had no fear or reverence for John, he stood beside her, and walked beside her; they were boy and girl together; John was nearly three years older; he would be twenty-one in the winter. She stood still radiant.

“You look rested enough now,” remarked Aunt Affy.

“I was not so tired, I was only blue; I was thinking about Don. John has been away all summer; he has not been in Bensalem since my birthday.”

“Did he come for that?” inquired Aunt Affy, keeping any suggestion out of her voice. She would not put ideas into the child’s head.

“He said so. And to say good-bye to the parsonage. We agreed not to write to each other while he was out west.”

“What for,” questioned Aunt Affy, suspiciously. “Had you ever written to each other before?”

“No,” laughed Judith, softly, “and we agreed not to begin.”

“What for?” asked Aunt Affy, again.

“For fun, I think, as much as anything. I think we had no real reason.”

“Two such reasonable creatures, too. Judith, you had a reason or he had. Why should the question come up?” Aunt Affy asked severely.

“Oh, questions are always coming up. He asked me if I would write and I refused.”

“And that’s how you agreed together. What was your reason?”

“I think,” began Judith slowly, “I was afraid Roger wouldn’t like it. Or Marion. Marion is particular about such things. I’m afraid she had something to trouble her once—she never will tease anybody about anybody, even.”

“Well, be off, and dress. I told John you would not be out for some time.”

“I’ll go in this dress. I haven’t seen him for months.”

Whether the haste augured well or ill for John, Aunt Affy could not decide; she went into Aunt Rody’s bedroom, touched her forehead and spoke to her.

“Are you sleepy, Rody?”

“Yes.”

“Would you like anything?”

“No.”

Aunt Affy, with her mending for her husband and for Joe, kept watch in the entry, lighted by the open back door, all the afternoon.

After half an hour on the piazza, Judith gave John Aunt Affy’s latest magazine to amuse himself with, and went up to her small chamber, to braid her tumbled hair and to array herself in the fresh, blue muslin.

In the cracked glass over the old bureau she met the reflection of a girl with joyful eyes and cheeks like pink roses. She knew that was not the girl that had watched Aunt Rody in the entry.

Her summer companion had come back; he was her vacation friend; perhaps she had missed him; perhaps her loneliness had not all been for her Cousin Don. He was still in her world; across the continent had not been in her world. He had not sent her one message through letters to Marion or Roger. She had not dared write to him. But he was home again, just as grave, and just as bright, with no reproach in his eyes, and he was planning to stay a week. He had come to talk to Roger and decide his choice of business in life; his father wished to take him into his own business, the jeweller’s, either in the factory or store, but he had no taste for making jewelry, or selling it, he said; he would rather study; he was “not good enough” to be a minister; he would like to study medicine.

Judith made herself as fresh and pretty as girls love to be, pondering the while John’s choice of work in life. She would choose for him to be like Roger, and do Roger’s work, but if he did not believe himself to be “called” like Roger, that would not be acceptable work; was not healing a part of Christ’s work; was not John gentle, sympathetic, and in love with every human creature? He had a copy of something of Drummond’s in his pocket; he said Drummond was making a man of him. The beginning of his manhood was in joining a Boy’s Brigade while he was away at boarding school up the Hudson. When she came back to the piazza he said he would read to her Drummond’s address to a Boy’s Brigade.

He had grown more grave since he went away; he told her the weight of what to do and what not to do was heavy upon him night and day.

“And he has such laughing brown eyes,” she said, almost aloud, to the girl in blue muslin, reflected in the cracked mirror.

“What are you going to do?” he inquired as he pushed a piazza chair near the hammock for her, and stretched himself in the hammock that he might look up at her and watch her as he talked.

“Must I do something?”

“You are old enough to decide. Girls are always deciding. Martha and Lou are forever taking up something new. They are not satisfied to be housekeepers. How Marion has settled down since she came to Bensalem! To be Roger’s housekeeper and a deaconess in his church has come to be her only ambition. Is that yours, too?”

“Which?” she asked with serious lips and dancing eyes.

“Both.”

“My Cousin Don thinks he has my future in his right hand. But I’m afraid his right hand is finding business he likes better.”

“Tell me true, what do you wish most to do?”

“If you cannot decide for yourself, how can you expect me to decide for myself?”

“I do know. I have decided. I am simply waiting for Roger’s judgment to confirm my choice. I want him to talk father over. Father wants one of his sons in the business, and Maurice declares he will not go in—he wants to be an architect. He has decided talent; as I have not, but am only commonplace and a drudgery sort of a fellow; I may take business instead of medicine to please father and help Maurice out. Mother beseeches me to please father; she almost put it ‘obey’ my father. What do you advise me?”

“O, John, is it like that? I thought there was nothing in the way but your own choice.”

“There is not. Father will give a grudging consent. I think he gave me my California trip to give me time to think—perhaps to think of his wishes. He went into the business to please his father.”

“He has not regretted it.”

“Far from it. He congratulates himself. I know a fellow whose father gave him a ‘thrashing’ to make him go to college; his grandfather had given his father a ‘thrashing’ and made him go.”

“Did he go?”

“The fellow I know? No; he ran away.”

“Do you want to run away?”

“I ran away to Bensalem to ask Roger.”

“I think Roger will urge you to please your father.”

“Father was glad enough for Roger to study.”

“That was because of the choice of study.”

“I knew that. But my choice is no mean one.”

“I think a natural bent should be respected,” reasoned Judith.

“I don’t know that I have a natural bent. A great English physician writes that he decided to study medicine when he was a boy because his father’s physician came to the house with a coat trimmed with gold lace. He was after the gold lace.”

“What are you after?”

“Money, reputation—position—”

“I don’t believe it,” she answered, earnestly.

“Oh, I would like them thrown in,” he laughed.

“In the Boy’s Brigade you didn’t make them first.”

“What do you make first?”

“Aunt Rody, just now.”

“What second, then?”

“Talking to you, on the piazza.”

“Judith,” catching her hands and holding them fast, “decide for me. Shall I study medicine, or shall I please my father and mother?”

“I cannot decide for you,” she said, lightly, withdrawing her hands.

“You don’t care.”

“I do care.”

“Decide then.”

“I am not the one to decide.”

“You are; if I put the decision in your hands.”

“But I am only a girl.”

“That is why I ask you. Girls see clear. They do not love money, they are not ambitious.”

“I do not love money. I may be ambitious.”

“How are you ambitious?”

She flushed and would not reply.

“About your stories? Do you expect to write?”

“I expect to write. I cannot help it; it is in me and will come out. Nothing much, perhaps; only little things, but I love them.”

“I do not think medicine is ‘in me’ like that. I simply like a profession better than the routine and drudgery of business.”

“That is not a great motive.”

“No; and that boy’s gold lace wasn’t; but he made a success.”

“Yes,” was all Judith said.

“You are displeased with me.”

“I am disappointed. I thought you cared.”

“I do; in a certain way.”

“But not in the best way.”

“Judith, I am not ‘great’ or ‘best.’”

“I thought you were; I want you to be.”

“That is a motive,” he said, catching her hands again. “Judith, if you will tell me you love me and will marry me, I will go home and tell my father I will make gold rings and sell them to the end of my days; but you must let me put one on your finger.”

“If you made it I’m afraid it wouldn’t fit,” she laughed, again withdrawing her hands.

“Will you, if it fits?”

“I cannot tell until I try.”

“Don’t play with me. It is neither ‘great’ nor ‘best’ for a girl to do that.”

“You frighten me,” she said, with a sound in her breath like a sob.

“I beg your pardon.”

“I cannot promise. I do not want to promise. I never thought of it.”

“You think I am only a boy.”

“I am only a girl.”

“I did not just think of it. You think I am too sudden and impulsive. I thought of you all the time I was gone. I have loved you ever since I knew you. How can anybody help loving you? You meant Bensalem to me more than Roger and Marion did. I have been afraid somebody would guess. I was afraid somebody would keep you away from me. Judith, don’t you care for me, at all?”

“Yes, John; but not like that. I couldn’t promise that. I never thought you cared like that.”

“How did you think I cared?” he asked, passionately; “in a grandfatherly way like Roger?”

“I do not know,” she answered sadly; “you were so good to me, and I liked you. I didn’t think.”

“Will you think now?” he asked, gently. “Will you think and tell me?”

“When?”

“As soon as you know yourself. I will wait years and years.”

“Yes, I will tell you as soon as I know myself,” she promised.

“Then I will wait. You are worth waiting for.”

“John, ought I to tell Marion?”

“No. Do not tell anybody. It is my secret. You haven’t any secret. Nobody need ever know, I will never be pitied.”

Judith pitied him then.

“I am not bound in any way. I haven’t promised, John.”

“No; you haven’t,” he said, touched by the sorrow in her face. “I am sorry to trouble you so; but I had to say it. I came to Bensalem to say it.”

“Are you sorry you came?”

“No; I had to have it out. Perhaps it will make a man of me. Something will have to. A man needs some kind of a fight.”

Judith thought that it was not only his “fight.”

“I am going home; I can’t stay here. I’ll tell Roger I decided not to stay over Sunday. I don’t care what he thinks. We talked till twelve o’clock last night. I know what he thinks. I’ll walk to Dunellen to the train, I’d like to start and walk around the world.”

“John.” Judith’s eyes were filled with tears.

“Don’t feel like that,” he answered, roughly; “it’s bad enough for me to feel for myself without feeling for you. I have always thought you cared.”

“I do care.”

“That’s no way to care.”

He walked off, not turning for her low word of farewell.

She would have kept him had she dared.

XXV. COUSIN DON.