She took it out of a little package she carried, and gave it to me. It was a handsome face, and looked very much as I had imagined, except that it was clean-shaven. I put it away carefully, and she said:—
“My life would have been very different had he lived, and I should not have been so unkind to every one. He was always so brave and good that I should have striven to be like him, for everybody loved him. But he is dead, and I cannot be content without him. It is this that makes me fretful, and unworthy of my many good friends. Oh dear, I am going to cry.”
She did cry again, apologizing for it in a way that reminded me of her uncle; and I sat there feeling like a fool while she was giving vent to her grief, and until she had regained her self-possession once more.
“I am sorry I did not see him buried, and that he did not have a quiet place to rest,” Agnes continued, wiping her eyes; “for I dream at night of his storm-tossed ship, and always think of the sea as forever rolling and tossing his poor body about, refusing it rest and peace. Often in the wicked waves I see his white face turned imploringly to me, and the noises of the night I torture into his cries to me for help. If I knew where he was buried, and could sometimes visit his grave, I should be more content, and less unhappy.”
I had heard a song called “When the Sea gives up its Dead,” and without thinking what I did I softly hummed it.
“When he came home at the time I saw him last, he carried me about in his great strong arms along the beach, and said that if some day he never came back, for me not to dislike the sea, for it had been his friend in many a storm, and had rocked him to sleep almost every night since he was born. ‘It will never prove treacherous,’ he said. ‘My ship may, but never the sea. The “Agnes” is not like the stout girl in whose honor she was named; she is getting old, and should she founder with me in the storms, and go down, never feel unkindly toward the sea. It has been my friend so many years that should it swallow me up I desire you to think that I deserved it.’ He went away soon after that, and we have never seen him since.”
Although the tears came into her eyes again, she bravely wiped them away.
“I am sorry for you,” I made bold to say, looking at her pretty face. “I wish I were a man, and old enough; I would marry you, and make you happy in spite of yourself. I cannot tell you how much I desire your good, or how much I love you. Your presence at our house has made us a different family. My mother is more content, and my father less gloomy; and surely Jo and I know more since you came. I love you because you are good and pretty, and I think you are prettier to-day than I have ever seen you before. If I were a little older I would fall in love with you, and worry you a great deal with my attentions.”
“It wouldn’t worry me, Ned,” she answered, with a return of her old cheerfulness. “I should like it. But I thought you were in love with me.”
“Oh, I am, of course—as a boy,” I answered; “but I mean if I were a man. If you should concentrate the love you distribute in Fairview on one man, I should like to be the man. That’s what I mean. You love everybody in Fairview just alike.”