Fashion and Famine

by Ann S. Stephens

Jacob Strong held his sister still closer to his bosom, and putting up his hand, he attempted to smooth her hair with a sort of awkward caress, probably an old habit of his boyhood, but his hand fell upon the muslin and ribbons of her cap, and the touch smote him like a reproach. "Oh, Sarah," he said, in a broken voice, "you have grown old. Have I been away so many years?"

"Never mind that now," answered Mrs. Gray, whose kindly heart was moved by the sigh that seemed lifting her from the bosom of her brother. "I have had trouble, and, sure enough, I have grown old, but it seems to me as if I was never so happy as I am now."

Jacob tightened his embrace a moment, and then released his sister.

"Get a light, Sarah, let us look at each other."

Mrs. Gray took a brass candlestick from the mantel-piece and kindled a light. Her face was paler than usual, and bathed with tears as she turned it toward Jacob. For a time the two gazed on each other with a look of intense interest; an expression of regretful sadness settled on their features, and, without a word, Mrs. Gray sat down the light.

"Is it age, Sarah, or trouble, that has turned your hair so grey?" said Jacob, a moment after, when both were seated at the hearth. He paused, a choking sensation came in his throat, and he added with an effort, "have I helped to do it? was it mourning because I went off and never wrote?"

"No, no, do not think that," was the kind reply, "I always knew that there must be some good reason for it; I always expected that you would come back, and that we should grow old together."

"Then it was not trouble about me?"

"Nothing of the kind; I knew that you would never do anything really wrong; something in my heart always told me that you were alive and about some good work, what, I could not tell; but though I longed to see you, and wondered often where you were, I was just as sure that all would end right, and that you would come back safe, as if an angel from heaven had told me so!"

"Yet I was doing wrong all the time, Sarah," answered Jacob, smitten to the heart by the honest sisterly faith betrayed in Mrs. Gray's speech. "It was cruel to leave you—cruel not to write. But it appeared to me as if I had some excuse. You were settled in life—and so much older. It did not seem as if you could care so much for me with a husband to think of. I was a boy, you know, and could not realize that two full grown married women really could care much about me."