"What on earth made you do that?" said the child's father, horrified.
"She talked too much about the British," replied Val, calmly.
"What!"
"I said the Americans were just as brave. I could see she didn't think so, so I got the carvin'-knife and—well, you know, she just caught the three-o'clock train."
The June of that year was intensely hot, but young Mrs. Gano was too ill to be carried out of the stifling city. Val was sent into the country to some cousins "for a change"—for whose change was not insisted upon. She was not brought back till the day after her mother's funeral. It was a strange and terrible time. For once she was passive and subdued. If the servants had not already remarked on her hard-heartedness, she would have cried herself ill. But she was full of a dull resentment as well as pain. At the time she was sent away she had gathered, as a quick-witted child does—Heaven knows how!—that her mother was dangerously ill. During that time in the country she had prayed for her recovery as she never prayed before or after, as none but the passionate-hearted ever pray. Night after night, when the light had been put out, and the others had gone to sleep, Val would get out of bed and kneel down at the side beseeching God to save her mother's life, and making solemn compacts with the Lord of Hosts. She would be so good, and build a church, too, in memory of this answer to prayer; she would be a nun, and serve God all her days, if He would spare her mother. She pointed out how easy it was for the All-Powerful to do this little thing. She wasn't waiting till it would require a Lazarus miracle, she was asking Him in good time. He had only to let the doctors know what would cure her. But she, Val Gano, would recognize in the recovery a direct answer to prayer, and she would keep her vows. She remembered a sermon she had heard on mountain-moving faith. Hers should be perfect and unfaltering. She knew God would answer this one prayer; she saw herself already in her nun's black habit, and began to say her last farewell to the world, to the prince that she knew was coming later on, to all her children—she called them by their names, "five brave sons and five beauteous daughters." She turned her back on them all, cut her long hair, and heard the convent gates clang to—all this was an accomplished destiny in her mind, when the telegram came to say her mother was dead. Her father was ill, too, now; there was nothing but sickness and death in the world, and the child was to stay where she was. The telegram was from her grandmother to cousin Nathaniel. Four days later, when she was permitted to go home, the funeral was over, and her grandmother was in charge of her mother's house. It was very awful. What did God mean by it?
The following week John Gano returned to his post at the bank. As he was leaving the counting-room, that first and last day after the death of his wife, he was seized with a violent hemorrhage, and was carried home, it was thought, to die.
Mrs. Gano nursed her son back to something faintly resembling health, and urged him to come home with her. No; he would stay where he was, till—
"Nonsense! you must rouse yourself for your children's sake. Here is Val, left to servants, and running wild. She must go to school. None better than the New Plymouth Seminary for Young Ladies."
"Oh, time enough for that. I can't let the child go just yet."
"There isn't time. That child is going to wreck and ruin. And you don't suppose I'm going to leave you here alone? You must come and get well and strong."