CHAPTER XI.
TIDINGS.
Early on the Saturday afternoon Lottie Stone, with her little bundle in her hand, tripped lightly over the common towards the cottage of Holdich, which lay embosomed within the woods of Lestrange. She was on her way to her parent’s home, and pleasure winged her steps. There are few joys more keen and pure than those experienced by a young girl, like Lottie, returning to the family whom she loves, after her first absence. What though Mrs. Stone’s dwelling-place was but a single room over a shop, with a tiny attic chamber for her son; to Lottie there was still a charm in the word “home,” for love and peace abode there. She clapped her hands for joy as the open cart in which she was seated rattled down the narrow paved street of Axe, and she caught sight of the ungainly figure of her only brother standing before the shop. Out sprang Lottie almost before the horse was pulled up, and in another minute she was locked in the arms of her mother.
How much had Lottie to tell; how fast she talked, how merrily she laughed, as she sat at her mother’s little deal table spread with unusual dainties—buttered muffins, and toast, and water-cresses from the stream. The washerwoman had “cleared up and made all tidy” for the reception of her daughter; and her son had decked the homely room with bunches of cowslips and daffodils. Deborah’s care-worn brow seemed less deeply wrinkled, and her thin anxious face often relaxed into a smile, as her merry child talked over her first eventful month of service, playfully describing what at the time of occurrence had seemed to her anything but sources of mirth,—her own petty troubles and ignorant blunders. Lottie’s hearers drew from her recital that Hannah was a somewhat formidable task-mistress, that “Master” was not very easily pleased, that crockery at the Lodge had a peculiar tendency to slip out of clumsy fingers, but that “Miss Isa” was the kindest of mistresses, and that a smile from her seemed to smooth every difficulty away.
“Bless your dear heart, how your poor father would have liked to have heard you!” exclaimed Deborah Stone, as the merry girl at length stopped to take breath.
For the loyal heart of the deserted wife remained true in its allegiance. Perhaps memory had softened the past, perhaps it overleaped the years of bitter suffering on the one side and tyranny on the other, and Deborah only thought of her husband as what he had been in the days of his wooing. However that might be, conjugal affection remained firm and bright like its pledge, the circlet on the wrinkled bony finger, the sole piece of gold which its owner possessed, and which no strain of poverty would ever induce her to part with. When Deborah knelt down in the evening to offer her simple little prayer with her children, very fervent was her supplication for one absent but never forgotten: where Abner was she knew not, what Abner was she had proved by bitter experience, but still, “true as the needle to the pole,” the hopes and affections of the injured woman still pointed towards her lost husband.
Sunday was an especially happy day to Lottie, it was such a pleasure to go to what she deemed her own church, hear her own pastor, meet again with her own companions in the Sunday school which she used to attend. She was only disappointed when the baronet’s carriage drew up to the church-porch, not to see in it the bright fair face of her dear young mistress.
“A letter for you, mother,” said Mrs. Stone’s son, as he entered on the Monday morning the little room in which Lottie, humming a lively air, was helping her parent to clear away the remains of their early breakfast. As Mrs. Stone’s receiving a letter of any kind was a quite unprecedented occurrence, Lottie turned with some curiosity to see what the missive could contain. It had come by a cross-country post, for her brother pointed to the stamp-mark upon it, “Southampton.”
“A letter for me?—why, who would write!” exclaimed Deborah, gazing with a look rather of anxiety than of curiosity on the address, “To D. Stone, Wildwast,” traced in a straggling, hardly legible hand, with “Try Axe” written below by the postmaster, showing that her correspondent could not be aware that—years ago—she had changed her abode. It was no wonder that Deborah did not recognize that rude handwriting, as she had seen it but once before, when, in the parish register, she had scrawled her own signature beneath that of her newly-wedded husband.