“Oh, my head aches,” was the evasive reply.
“You had best go to bed; you make me nervous, fidgeting around so!”
“It is too early to go to bed! I’ll go out in the air a little while—perhaps that will help my head,” answered Merna.
“Merna Wood, you have been down to that gate about a dozen times; why don’t you be honest, and say that you are looking for Ned!” half in derision, and a trifle crossly, retorted her mother.
Merna answered with mock humility: “Yes’m, I’ll confess, if you will not be cross. Oh, mamsy, I wish he would come; there is something I wish to say to him!” she kneeled down with her head on her mother’s knee, like a little child.
Her mother replied laughingly: “It appears to me that you do usually have something to say to him,” but her hand wandered caressingly through the soft, bright hair; thus evidencing her sympathy.
He did not come that night nor the next, and for three almost unending months Merna neither heard from nor of him; then incidentally, she heard that he was gone, but where her informant did not know.
Gone without so much as a word to her!
She shut her grief within her heart and went about her duties but with the subtle essence of hope and faith taken out of her life—she thought forever—she had little idea how elastic is hope; faith is more ethereal, hope has tough fibre.
When her mother would have sympathized with her, she made light of it: “I don’t care! If he wants to stay away, he can; don’t you fret about me, mamsy!” But mamsy was not in the least deceived.