"Oh, dear Miss Recompense, you are not queer," protested Doris, seizing her hand. "When I first came I was a little afraid—you were so very nice. And then I remembered that Miss Arabella had all these nice ways, and could not bear a cloth askew nor towels wrinkled instead of being laid straight, nor anything spilled at the table, nor an untidy room, and she was very sweet and nice. And then I tried to be as neat as I could."
"I knew you had been well brought up." Miss Recompense was pleased always to be compared to her "dear Miss Arabella." There was something grateful to her woman's heart, that had long ago held a longing for a child of her own, in the ardent tone Doris always uttered this endearment.
"Miss Recompense, don't you think there is something in people loving you? You want to love them in return. You want to do the things they like. And when they smile and are glad, your whole heart is light with a kind of inward sunshine. And I think if Mrs. Manning would smile on Elizabeth once in a while, and tell her what she did was nice, and that she was smart,—for she is very, very smart,—I know it would comfort her."
"You see, people haven't thought it was best to praise children. They rarely did in my day."
"But Uncle Leverett praised Warren and Betty, and always said what Aunt Elizabeth cooked and did was delightful."
"Foster Leverett was one man out of a thousand. They will all miss him dreadfully."
Aunt Priscilla would have been amazed to know that Mr. Leverett had been in the estimation of Miss Recompense an ideal husband. Years ago she had compared other men with him and found them wanting.
Uncle Win was much surprised to find them sitting there talking when he came home, for it was ten o'clock. Cary returned shortly after, and the two men retired to the study. But there was a curious half-dread of some intangible influence that kept Doris awake a long while. The wind moaned outside and now and then raised to a somber gust sweeping across the wide Common. Oh, how lonely it must be in the old burying ground!
Mr. Leverett's will had been read that evening. The business was left to Warren, as Hollis had most of his share years before. To the married daughters a small remembrance, to Betty and her mother the house in Sudbury Street, to be kept or sold as they should elect; if sold, they were to share equally.
Mrs. King was very well satisfied. In the present state of affairs Warren's part was very uncertain, and his married sisters were to be paid out of that. The building was old, and though the lot was in a good business location, the value at that time was not great.