“You mean it had been, but it was past that point. It’s very evident that Great-Aunt Sarah buys good clothes for herself. Something new for Rose for a dress would have done her more good than all that cast-off finery.”
“To my mind the letter was worse than the box,” declared Mrs. Patience. “I never heard anything more heartless and cold-blooded. One would have thought the mere facts would have aroused a sympathy for Rose.”
“She is coming in,” cautioned Miss Silence, “and we would not say anything before her. But this much is certain, that I know all I want to of Mrs. Sarah Hartly.”
CHAPTER XXII
QUIET DAYS
You may have seen a little leaf that has fallen into a stream and been whirled along by the unresting current, torn and bruised and helpless, then suddenly drift into a still and quiet pool and lie tranquil, unvexed, while the stream, unable longer to clutch it, goes hurrying by. So to Rose, after her troubled, changeful childhood, Farmdale was the quiet pool, where she was to find a quiet, uneventful period.
Not that Rose ever thought of it as uneventful. To her school life she brought an enthusiasm that never flagged; the school tests, the class competitions, the school entertainments, the school games, and even the school differences, she entered into them all heart and soul. She studied hard, she took eager advantage of every opportunity, and was none the less ready for every enjoyment with the keen zest of her intense nature. Then outside the school was the village with all its people and all their happenings, a little world of itself. “Some of the girls call Farmdale dull and poky,” she repeated wonderingly to Miss Silence. “I’m sure it isn’t dull to me—I don’t see how they can think it is.”
The Blossom household quickly became home, and home folks to Rose. But when Mrs. Blossom promised for her the same care she would have given her own little Rachel, she included also, what she would have expected of little Rachel had she lived, as she had of her other daughters, the yielding of a ready, cheerful obedience. Mrs. Blossom’s law was one Rose had known little of, the law of love, but none the less was it law. Never in their girlhood, and hardly in their maturer years, had Silence or Patience Blossom dreamed of acting in opposition to their mother’s will—that reasonable, mild, but inflexible will. And though Rose had not hesitated to face Mrs. Hagood’s fury, yet when those clear, steadfast eyes looked into hers, and that kindly but firm voice said, with its accent of decision, “Rose, you cannot!” she instinctively realized that here was a force, the force of moral strength, that impetuous willfulness would beat powerless against. Nor was her affection for Mrs. Blossom any the less sincere because of the obedient respect on which it was founded.
Great-Uncle Samuel had been rightly informed that the Farmdale high school was a good one, and the lessons Rose learned within its walls were to her of value; but no less so was the unconscious teaching of the pure and unselfish lives that were open before her every day. Over an ardent young life, full of dreams and plans and ambitions, all centered in self, a happier influence could not well have fallen than that of these gentle, kindly women, whose spirit of helpfulness and sympathy was always as ready and unfailing as the flow of the fountain itself.
Was any one in distress, in perplexity, in trouble; there was no counselor so wise, discreet, trustworthy, as Mrs. Blossom, who held half the village secrets, and had served as a peacemaker times without number. Was there a bride to be dressed; no one could do it so well as Miss Silence or Mrs. Patience. Was any one sick; no nurses were as tender and skillful and tireless as they. Did the shadow of death rest over a home; no voices could speak words of sweeter comfort to the dying, no other’s presence was so unobtrusive, so helpful in the house of bereavement. Indeed, few were the families in that little community to whom they were not bound by the cords of a common sympathy in some hour of joy or grief. And Rose was not the only one who often wondered how with all the calls upon them they still managed to accomplish so much, and with a manner so unhurried.
“I don’t see how you ever do it,” Rose exclaimed one day.