"Well—'f I never!" gasped Mrs. Knoxwell, with a sound in her voice as if she had received a blow in the pit of her stomach.
"Jest as you please, Marion—'f I ain't no more use!" And the aggrieved matron, who had, as she said afterward in recounting it, "done everything," left the scene of her labors and her animadversions, with a face perfectly emptied of all expression by her inability to "realize what she did feel."
Ray Ingraham came in, went straight up to Marion, and took her into her arms without a word. And Marion put her head down on Ray's shoulder, and cried her very heart out.
"You needn't try to comfort me. I can't be comforted like anybody else. It's the day of judgment come down into my life. I've sold my birthright: I've nobody belonging to me any more. I wanted the world—to be free in it; and I'm turned out into it now; and home's gone—and mother.
"I never thought of her dying. I expected one of these days to do for her, and not let her work any more. I meant to, Ray—I did, truly! But she's dead—and I let her die!"
With sentences like these, Marion broke out now and again, putting aside all Ray's consolations; going back continually to her self-upbraidings, after every pause in which Ray had let her rest or cry quietly; after every word with which she tried to prevail against her despair and soothe her with some hope or promise.
"They are none of them for me!" she cried. "It would have been better if I had never been born. Ray!" she said suddenly, in a strained, hollow voice, grasping Rachel's arm and looking with wild, swollen eyes into hers,—"I was just as bad by little Sue. I was only fourteen then, but it was the same evil, unsuitable vanity and selfishness. I was busy, while she was sick, making a white muslin burnouse to wear to a fair. I had teased mother for it. It was a silly thing for a girl like me to wear; it had a blue ribbon run in the hem of the hood, and a bow and long blue ends behind. Poor little Sue was just down with the fever. Mother had to go out, and left me to tend her. She wanted some water—Oh!"
Marion broke down, and sobbed, with her head bowed to her knees as she sat.
Ray sat perfectly still. She longed to beg her not to think about it, not to say any more; but she knew she would feel better if she did.
"I told her I'd go presently; and she waited—the patient little thing! And I was making my blue bow, and fixing it on, and fussing with the running, and I forgot! And she couldn't bear to bother me, and didn't say a word, but waited till she dropped to sleep without it; and her lips were so red and dry. It was a whole hour that I let her lie so. She never knew anything after that.