“‘Poor Miss Cora! I ’spect she won’t work no more in this garden.’
“He was an old man, bent and worn. To have seen the child’s and his figure moving together about those walks a month ago, who would have dreamed the lighter, younger form must lie low first?
“‘We’re in the Lord’s hands,’ said the old man, looking upward. ‘I did not think her time would come first;’ and he hobbled on. I watched him. It seemed strange to me to see him so content. Day after day, he plodded on in the same dull routine. I never saw him without that same sense of wondering pity. He did not read, he could not play, he worked, worked from morning till night. What was life to him? I asked myself. Presently he came limping back, he held something in his hand. ‘I got this in the biggest bush of box. It is an apron, isn’t it?’
“Yes; it was Cora’s little silk apron, with the greasy spots from the spilt cream on it. I took it into my hand with such a pain shooting through my very heart, tears rushed to my eyes, and I could scarcely stand. And the thought that she was now near the threshold of that unseen world, where all must render an account of the deeds done in the body, made me shudder with dismay.
“I did not know what to do. Words cannot describe my feelings of self-reproach, the pain of knowing that I had prevented her from easing her conscience by confession. I went back to the house, carrying the apron. Aunt Marion, in her white wrapper, passed quickly along the hall, with ice on a plate for the sick-room, too anxious to think of any one but her suffering child.
“While I was still standing there, she returned. Tears were on her cheeks. She came to me and clasped me in her arms, sobbing. ‘I cannot bear it—it seems too hard,’ she said. Seeing what I held in my hand, the weeping was renewed.
“‘Where did you find her apron—poor, dear Cora?’ she asked, after a while, touching it tenderly, almost reverently, as we do the veriest trifle belonging to the dead.
“‘Baines found it in the garden, Auntie,’ I answered, looking down. The opportunity was near for making my confession.
“‘In the garden? How could it have come there?’ said Auntie, still smoothing out the creases with her gentle fingers, the tears dropping all the while.
“I did not answer. Aunt Marion looked up at my silence, she saw my tears, my pale cheeks, my down-cast looks. ‘Do you know any thing about it, Mary?’ she asked.