"You shall trot over them still! We will make them as strong as the everlasting hills. They shall outlast our time, Dorothy."
"Well, about the rent," said Dorothy. "I'm afraid it will not take us through the winter, unless there is something I can do. Mother couldn't possibly be moved now, and if she could, it will be months before the house is fit to live in. But we cannot stay here in comfort, unless thy mother will let me make up in some way. Mother will not need me all the time, and I know thy mother hires women to spin."
"She'll let you do all you like, if it will make you any happier. But you don't know how much money is coming to you. Come, let us look over the figures."
He lowered the lid of the black mahogany secretary, placed a chair for Dorothy, and opened a great ledger before her, bending down, with one hand on the back of the chair, the other turning the leaves of the ledger. Considering the index, and the position of the letter B in the alphabet, he was a long time finding his place. Dorothy looked out of the window, over the tops of the yellowing woods, to the gray and turbid river below. Where the hemlocks darkened the channel of the glen, she heard the angry floods rushing down. The formless rain mists hung low, and hid the opposite shore.
"See!" said Evesham, with his finger wandering rather vaguely down the page. "Your father went away on the third of May. The first month's rent came due on the third of June. That was the day I opened the gate and let the water down on you, Dorothy. I'm responsible for everything, you see,—even for the old ewe that was drowned!"
His words came in a dream as he bent over her, resting his unsteady hand heavily on the ledger.
Dorothy laid her cheek on the date she could not see, and burst into tears.
"Don't—please don't!" he said, straightening himself, and locking his hands behind him. "I am human, Dorothy!"
The weeks of Rachel's sickness that followed were perhaps the best discipline Evesham's life had ever known. He held the perfect flower of his bliss, unclosing in his hand; yet he might barely permit himself to breathe its fragrance! His mother had been a strong and prosperous woman; there was little he could ever do for her. It was well for him to feel the weight of helpless infirmity in his arms, as he lifted Dorothy's mother from side to side of her bed, while Dorothy's hands smoothed the coverings. It was well for him to see the patient endurance of suffering, such as his youth and strength defied. It was bliss to wait on Dorothy, and follow her with little watchful homages, received with a shy wonder which was delicious to him,—for Dorothy's nineteen years had been too full of service to others to leave much room for dreams of a kingdom of her own. Her silent presence in her mother's sick-room awed him. Her gentle, decisive voice and ways, her composure and unshaken endurance through nights of watching and days of anxious confinement and toil, gave him a new reverence for the mysteries of her unfathomable womanhood.
The time of Friend Barton's return drew near. It must be confessed that Dorothy welcomed it with a little dread, and Evesham did not welcome it at all. On the contrary, the thought of it roused all his latent obstinacy and aggressiveness. The first day or two after the momentous arrival wore a good deal upon every member of the family, except Margaret Evesham, who was provided with a philosophy of her own, which amounted almost to a gentle obtuseness, and made her a comfortable non-conductor, preventing more electric souls from shocking each other.