Then I told them of the order I had just received, and as I spoke I felt my heart burn, and my face flush, and my voice set itself to its old strong, happy tone, and the girls caught its cheerful influence, and we were soon discussing what was to be done, with the greatest interest and pleasure. For I knew the voice that had spoken—it was one, that had never yet deceived me.
I had nothing except my furniture, and old furniture sold for very little, but I knew God would not send me a journey, without providing the means; so I began there and then to prepare for it. I sold my piano to a friend at private sale, 297 and I got a lawyer, who was in my debt, to collect what money was still due me from old boarders. He was quite successful and I hoped the proceeds of the auction added to these would raise my fund to five hundred dollars.
“God and five hundred dollars will be sufficient,” I said to my children; and they smiled and nodded, and were as confident and hopeful as myself.
On the night of the sixth of November, while I was talking to the auctioneer about the sale, a letter was given me. I saw the postmark was Austin, and I laid it carelessly down on the chimney piece, and went on with the conversation. After the auctioneer had gone, we had a cup of tea and some oysters, and I forgot all about the letter, until I was closing the house for the night. Then I lifted it carelessly, and took it upstairs with me. Lilly noticed it in my hand, and asked where it was from?
“Austin,” I answered.
“Read it, Mamma.”
As I opened it, a slip of paper fluttered to the floor. It was a check from the auctioneer, with whom I had left the furniture of my Austin home for sale. When I reached Galveston, I told Robert the agreement made with them, left the affairs in his hands, and had ever since forgotten all about it. Indeed if I had remembered it, I would have been sure Robert had collected the proceeds long ago. But here was a check made out to myself, for one hundred and eighty dollars, being the last payment due on the goods they had sold. They sent it with sympathetic words, and nothing that ever came to me had so much the air of a “godsend.”
We were so happy and excited, that we sat talking until nearly three o’clock, and it was at this time, Lilly made a proposition, which at first appeared foolish and distressing. “Mamma,” she said, “now that you have got some more money, let me go to Glasgow. I will try to make a friend of grandmother, and perhaps for Papa’s sake she will send me to school for two years. By that time you would be settled in some way.”
At first I would not listen to such a thing, but gradually 298 the girls persuaded me, that I ought to give up Lilly for Lilly’s own sake. And I comforted myself with the thought of her natural bravery and self-sufficiency. Every one liked her, and surely her own kindred would be won by her kind heart, and sunny cheerful disposition. I finally acceded to the plan, and then all conversation afterward made the Glasgow arrangement more firm and certain. But that morning I fell asleep with a fresh, keen pain in my heart; for Lilly, ever since her father’s death, had been my great reliance in many ways.
On the ninth we were preparing for the sale, which was to take place in the house, and on the tenth we ate breakfast and had prayers together and then went to the Palmetto House to stay until the Ariadne sailed for New York, which was expected to be on the twelfth; but owing to contrary winds, she did not get over the bar until the following day. During these three days at the hotel, we made our last arrangements and received unlimited kindness both from friends I knew well, and also from many others who had no reason for their attentions, excepting their loving remembrance of my husband.