Now for a number of years I’d been up in the other part of the town with Aunt Netty, who kept a shop that I tended between schools and before and after, and I’d almost forgotten there was such a soul on earth as Dan Devereux,——though he’d not forgotten me. I’d got through the Grammar and had a year in the High, and suppose I should have finished with an education and gone off teaching somewhere, instead of being here now, cheerful as heart could wish, with a little black-haired hussy tiltering on the back of my chair. Rolly, get down! Her name’s Laura,——for his mother. I mean I might have done all this, if at that time mother hadn’t been thrown on her back, and been bedridden ever since. I haven’t said much about mother yet, but there all the time she was, just as she is to-day, in her little tidy bed in one corner of the great kitchen, sweet as a saint, and as patient;——and I had to come and keep house for father. He never meant that I should lose by it, father didn’t; begged, borrowed, or stolen, bought or hired, I should have my books, he said: he’s mighty proud of my learning, though between you and me it’s little enough to be proud of; but the neighbors think I know ’most as much as the minister,——and I let ’em think. Well, while Mrs. Devereux was sick I was over there a good deal,——for if Faith had one talent, it was total incapacity,——and there had a chance of knowing the stuff that Dan was made of; and I declare to man ’t would have touched a heart of stone to see the love between the two. She thought Dan held up the sky, and Dan thought she was the sky. It’s no wonder,——the risks our men lead can’t make common-sized women out of their wives and mothers. But I hadn’t been coming in and out, busying about where Dan was, all that time, without making any mark; though he was so lost in grief about his mother that he didn’t take notice of his other feelings, or think of himself at all. And who could care the less about him for that? It always brings down a woman to see a man wrapt in some sorrow that’s lawful and tender as it is large. And when he came and told me what the neighbors said he must do with Faith, the blood stood still in my heart.
“Ask mother, Dan,” says I; for I couldn’t have advised him. “She knows best about everything.”
So he asked her.
“I think——I’m sorry to think, for I fear she’ll not make you a good wife,” said mother, “but that perhaps her love for you will teach her to be——you’d best marry Faith.”
“But I can’t marry her!” said Dan, half choking; “I don’t want to marry her,——it——it makes me uncomfortable-like to think of such a thing. I care for the child plenty——Besides,” said Dan, catching at a bright hope, “I’m not sure that she’d have me.”
“Have you, poor boy! What else can she do?”
Dan groaned.
“Poor little Faith!” said mother. “She’s so pretty, Dan, and she’s so young, and she’s pliant. And then how can we tell what may turn up about her some day? She may be a duke’s daughter yet,——who knows? Think of the stroke of good-fortune she may give you!”
“But I don’t love her,” said Dan, as a finality.