"I was ever a fighter, so one fight more!" as she read sometimes in the "pretty" poetry her girls were always asking for—read steadily, even when she came to the last verse in that passionate "Prospice:"
"Till, sudden, the worst turns the best to the brave,
The black minute's at end:
And the elements rage, the fiend voices that rave
Shall dwindle, shall blend,
Shall change, shall become first a peace, then a joy,
Then a light—then thy breast,
O thou soul of my soul! I shall clasp thee again,
And with God be the rest!"
To that life to come, during all the burden and heat of the day (no, the afternoon, a time, faded, yet hot and busy still, which is often a very trying bit of woman's life) she now began yearningly to look. To meet him again, even in old age, or with death between, was her only desire. Yet she did her duty still, and enjoyed all she could, knowing that one by one the years were hurrying onward, and the night coming, "in which no man can work."
Faithful to his promise, about the middle of July David Dalziel appeared, in overflowing spirits, having done very well at college. He was such a boy still, in character and behavior; though—as he carefully informed the family—now twenty-one and a man, expecting to be treated as such. He was their landlord too, and drew up the agreement in his own name, meaning to be a lawyer, and having enough to live on—something better than bread and salt—"till I can earn a fortune, as I certainly mean to do some day."
And he looked at Janetta, who looked down on the parlor carpet—as young people will. Alas! I fear that the eyes of her anxious friend and governess were not half wide enough open to the fact that these young folk were no longer boy and girls, and that things might happen—in fact, were almost certain to happen—which had happened to herself in her youth—making life not quite easy to her, as it seemed to be to these two bright girls.
Yet they were so bright, and their relations with David Dalziel were so frank and free—in fact, the young fellow himself was such a thoroughly good fellow, so very difficult to shut her door against, even if she had thought of so doing. But she did not. She let him come and go, "miserable bachelor" as he proclaimed himself, with all his kith and kin across the seas, and cast not a thought to the future, or to the sad necessity which sometimes occurs to parents and guardians—of shutting the stable door after the steed is stolen.
Especially, as not long after David appeared, there happened a certain thing to all but her, and yet to her it was, for the time being, utterly overwhelming. It absorbed all her thoughts into one maddened channel, where they writhed and raved and dashed themselves blindly against inevitable fate. For the first time in her life this patient woman felt as if endurance were not the right thing; as if wild shrieks of pain, bitter outcries against Providence, would be somehow easier, better: might reach His throne, so that even now He might listen and hear.
The thing was this. One day, waiting for some one beside the laurel bush at her gate—the old familiar bush, though it had grown and grown till its branches, which used to drag on the gravel, now covered the path entirely—she overheard David explaining to Janetta how he and his brothers and Mr. Roy had made the wooden letter-box, which actually existed still, though in very ruinous condition.
"And no wonder, after fifteen years and more. It is fully that old, isn't it Miss Williams? You will have to superannuate it shortly, and return to the old original letter-box—my letter-box, which I remember so well. I do believe I could find it still."
Kneeling down, he thrust his hand through the thick barricade of leaves into the very heart of the tree.