He smiled at her, then turned with a sudden wistfulness to his sister. “Katharine,” he said, “I’ve been thinking a lot about you, and how much harder ’twould be for you than ’tis for me, if you should be taken sick down there all by yourself. There wouldn’t be anybody to take care of you as the folks take care of me. I wish you lived up here with us. I’ve wanted it this good while; and Elsie’d be willing, you know she would.”
“She wouldn’t like it, Ruel, and you wouldn’t either, after a little while,” said the old woman, her swift honesty throwing a note that was a trifle harsh into her voice. “You and I never did see things the same way, and we should see ’em more contrariwise than ever, if we had to stand on just the same piece o’ ground to look at ’em.”
The old man lifted his head with an obvious effort, and his breath came quick for a moment. “No,” he said, “we never did look at things just alike, you ’n’ I, and I guess ’twas natural to us both to want to pull the other round to our way. But I’ve been thinking about that too, Katharine, and I’m—I’m afraid I’ve riled you up sometimes when I hadn’t or’ to. You’ve got just as good a right to your way of looking at things as I have to mine, and I’m afraid I’ve said things to you sometimes that warn’t becoming.”
What she might have replied to this, if a neighbor, with Aunt Elsie, had not entered the room at that moment, is not certain. A pallor had swept suddenly across her face, and her eyes, wide and startled, were fixed with a frightened look upon her brother. She rose from her chair as the others drew near, and without responding to their greeting stepped swiftly outside the door. Then she beckoned to her niece with a trembling gesture.
“Elsie,” she whispered, when the other had crossed the threshold, “I’ll be obliged to you if you’ll let Tom hitch up and drive me down to the house. I want to get a few things and come right back. If you don’t mind I’ll stay here a while. Ruel’s a dreadful sick man.”
[CHAPTER XVI—IN WHICH SEVERAL PEOPLE GET HOME]
She had guessed the truth first, but they knew it, all of them, in a few days more. They knew that Ruel Saxon’s feet were set on the downward path to the valley from which there is no return.
They did not send for Stella. She had her work, and there were enough in the home to do all that could be done for him. Still there was little pain, a growing weakness, and the mind wandering more and more often, but always peacefully, and oftenest over the years that lay far, far behind him. Of Esther he seemed almost to have lost knowledge. He called her Lucia constantly now, and liked no one so much at his bedside.
And she kept her place, with no regret for any employment she might have had in its stead. There came a letter from Mr. Philip Hadley, with messages for her grandfather, and though the latter but half understood as she read them, he seemed touched and pleased. The young man had learned, through a call on Stella, of the old gentleman’s illness and the consequent delay in the carrying out of Esther’s plan, and he wrote, earnestly hoping it might not be for long, with kindest expressions of sympathy for his aged friend.
And then there came another, but this Esther did not read aloud. The reading to herself alone left a troubled look in her eyes as she laid it down. It seemed that Mr. Hadley’s plans had suffered change, too. His father was not bearing the Boston November well, and California for the winter was the doctor’s prescription. He must go with them, the young man wrote, to see his father and mother well settled, but it would be only for a few weeks, and by the time he returned surely Esther herself would be in Boston. “I confess,” he added, “that anxious as I am to do what I can for my father, I could hardly bear it to be away from Boston if you were here now.”