Blue Bonnet heard them go. All at once, the big house seemed very empty and still. Her room was in order, her morning lay before her; but freedom had lost its charm, the woods no longer called to her.
Aunt Lucinda had had no right to spoil her day—her day that had begun so beautifully—she told herself, staring out into the sunlit garden with mutinous eyes. It was quite impossible to keep friends with Aunt Lucinda; she should not try any more.
And then, quite unaccountably, there flashed across the girl’s mind the memory of that last night at home. It almost seemed as if she could hear her uncle saying, “And, Honey, you won’t forget what your father said: that you were to try to live as he had taught you to ride, straight and true.”
Straight and true!
She wasn’t living very straight this Sunday morning; and it hadn’t been true—pretending to herself that there wasn’t time.
Just before the sermon, during the singing of the hymn, Blue Bonnet came hurriedly down the middle aisle to the Clyde pew, and slipped into her place between her grandmother and aunt, standing a little nearer Miss Clyde than usual, and offering to share her hymn-book, instead of her grandmother’s.
Involuntarily, Miss Lucinda cast a swift, comprehensive glance over the flushed white-clad figure. Then she drew a quick breath of reassurance: evidently Delia had lent a helping hand.
Blue Bonnet heard little of the sermon, save the text, “‘I am the good shepherd, and know my sheep, and am known of mine.’”
The words sent her eyes to the window opposite: “Sacred to the memory of Elizabeth Clyde Ashe.”