"He is worthy of it, too," said Mr. Harris, "or I could not have recommended him. I am about as sorry to part with him as any one. I don't know when we will find such another painstaking fellow. You will miss him about reading, won't you?" turning to me, "and I came over to say that if you'd like to borrow any of the books I have, you'd be welcome to them. My sister is going to call on you. Why, you must get lonesome here with no one but your father."
"I've never had any one else," I replied, "and everybody has been very good to me."
"And you are your father's housekeeper?"
"Partly a woman comes in to help."
"I thought you were larger, older, though I have never noticed you especially. Well, some evening I'll bring my sister over. She has no children, to her great sorrow, so you must make friends."
"I shall be very glad to," I said.
Father came in before he went and they had a little talk, mostly about the good fortune that had befallen Norman.
Then we shut up the house and went to bed. Yes, it must be something like a funeral. The body went out of the house. I wondered how any one could bear to have it put in the ground. Norman had read about some country—I think it was Egypt—where they built real houses for their dead and put in them the things their relatives had used while alive, painted and carved pictures on the walls and went in to see them now and then. That seemed ever so much nicer than lowering them into the earth.
"But Norman isn't dead," I said to myself, "and he surely will come back." I ran it over in my mind. Seven hundred and thirty days. Each day would count.
I recalled the time I had first seen him and the warm welcome Mrs. Hayne had given us after that long journey. That was more than four years ago, and then I laughed softly to myself—why he would be away only half that time, and the four years had not seemed long. So I dropped asleep quite happy.