"Be strong,—be patient, dear!"
It came back, in the midst of the darkness, the misery; it helped her through those days; it made her strong for her mother. It comforted her, she hardly knew how much; but O, how cruel it seemed afterward!
They went directly down to Boston. Mr. Ledwith was buried from their own house. It was all over; and now, what should they do? Uncle Titus came to see them. Mrs. Ripwinkley came right back from Homesworth. Dorris Kincaid left her summer-time all behind, and came to stay with them a week in Shubarton Place. Mrs. Ledwith craved companionship; her elder daughters were away; there were these five weeks to go by until she could hear from them. She would not read their letters that came now, full of chat and travel.
Poor Laura! her family scattered; her dependence gone; her life all broken down in a moment!
Dorris Kincaid did not speak of Kenneth and Rosamond. How could she bring news of others' gladness into that dim and sorrowful house?
Luclarion Grapp shut up her rooms, left her plants and her birds with Mrs. Gallilee, and came up to Shubarton Place in the beginning. There were no servants there; everything was adrift; the terrible blows of life take people between the harness, most unprovided, unawares.
It was only for a little while, until they could hear from the girls, and make plans. Grant Ledwith's income died with him; there was ten thousand dollars, life insurance; that would give them a little more than a sixth part of what his salary had been; and there were the two thousand a year of Uncle Titus; and the house, on which there was a twelve thousand dollar mortgage.
Mrs. Ledwith had spent her life in cutting and turning and planning; after the first shock was over, even her grief was counterpoised and abated, by the absorption of her thoughts into the old channels. What they should do, how they should live, what they could have; how it should be contrived and arranged. Her mind busied itself with all this, and her trouble was veiled,—softened. She had a dozen different visions and schemes, projected into their details of residence, establishment, dress, ordering,—before the letters came, bringing back the first terribleness in the first reception of and response to it, of her elder children.
It was so awful to have them away,—on the other side of the world! If they were only once all together again! Families ought not to separate. But then, it had been for their good; how could she have imagined? She supposed she should have done the same again, under the same circumstances.