The next day we did as she had bidden, in sending for Mr. Stokes, who accordingly came, and gave the Communion to all our household, as well as to our poor aunt. I never liked him better than on that day.
But a sad day it proved to us, for we all saw plainly how our second mother was now a dying woman. I think she hardly said twenty words to one of us thereafter, but quietly slept and dreamed her life away, and on the third day she was gone. This was last winter, the winter of 1664; and I remember how all that melancholy time the people were greatly disturbed about the comet that was to be seen, wondering what mischiefs it should betoken; I saw it myself, but so full was my mind of my private griefs, I cared not much about ill omens to the State. Indeed, one thing that soon happened was very distressing to us, and I shall shortly relate what it was.
CHAPTER VII.
HOW ANDREW CAME TO THE GRANGE BY NIGHT.
It was about a ten days after Mrs. Golding's death, and we were beginning to feel as if our desolation was a thing that had always been and always would be, for so I think it often seems when a grief is new. However desolate we were, we were not destitute; she who was gone had cared for that, and we found a modest dower secured to each of us, without injury to Andrew's rightful inheritance of the Grange and the lands belonging thereto; also we were to continue dwelling in the Grange till its new master should come home and make such dispositions as pleased him. But for all this we were greatly perplexed; we had been long without news of Andrew, and could not tell how to get word to him of Mrs. Golding's death.
On the day I speak of, we had been teased by a visit from Mrs. Bonithorne, who, professing great sorrow for our loss, and her own loss of one whom she called her oldest friend, soon fell to talking of Andrew, and how his unlucky doings were all owing to our good aunt's foolishness in entertaining so pestilent a heretic as James Westrop under her roof.
'I warned her of it,' quoth she; 'I said to her, "You will rue it yet, Margaret; with such an one you should have no dealings, no, not so much as to eat," and now see what has come of her perverseness!' and such-like stuff she said, which moved Grace Standfast to say disdainfully, when our visitor was gone, 'Yon woman surely owes us a little grudge, that 'twas our house and not hers which entertained so rare a monster as a wandering Quaker; she asked me twenty questions about him the day after, I remember it well; but we hardly had heart to laugh, though we were sure enough she had given no such warnings as she spake of. Althea only sighed and said, ''twas an evil day for her when she first saw that man;' and as she told me, his two appearances to us haunted her as she went to rest, and mingled themselves with her dreams. She woke at last sharply and suddenly, thinking she heard the hail rattling against the windows as it did when Mr. Truelocke preached his last sermon in our church; but it was not hail that rattled, it was some one throwing sand and pebbles up at her window to wake her, and then a voice calling on her name. She sprang up, and, hurrying on some clothes, she ran down-stairs; for, as she told me, she had no more doubt of its being Andrew who called, than if it had been broad daylight, and she could see him standing below the window; and, being too impatient to unlock any door, she undid the hasp of the nearest casement and climbed out; and at the same moment hearing a voice again calling softly, 'Althea,' she ran in the direction of the sound, and came upon a man whom in the starlight she saw to be Andrew indeed; she spoke his name, holding out both her hands, and he turning at once grasped them in both his, and so they stood gazing at each other awhile. Then she said, half sobbing,—
'You come strangely, Andrew—but you come to your own house, and I am glad that it falls to me to welcome you to it; it lacks a master sadly;' and she tried to draw him towards the door, telling him she would set it open if he would tarry a few minutes while she herself climbed in to do it.