What had she done that life should shut down before her in such cruel bareness? Was she not young, very young to be unhappy? She began to fight a little with herself and Providence in savage mood; favored the crimped hair and Scotch plaids again, tried a nutting-party and a sewing-circle, as well as a little flirtation with Jim Snow. This lasted for another week. At the end of that time she went and sat down alone one noon on a pile of kindlings in the wood-house, and thought it over.
"Why, I can't!" her eyes widening with slow terror. "Happiness won't come. I can't make it. I can't ever make it. And O, I'm just at the beginning of everything!"
Somebody called her just then to peel the potatoes for dinner. She thought—she thought often in those days—of that fancy of hers about calico-living. Was not that all that was left for her? Little dreary, figures, all just alike, like the chocolate morning-dress? O, the rose-bud and shimmer that might have been waiting somewhere! And O, the rose-bud and shimmer that were forever gone!
The frosted golds of autumn melted into a clear, sharp, silvered winter, carrying Sharley with them, round on her old routine. It never grew any the easier or softer. The girl's little rebellious feet trod it bitterly. She hated the darning and the sweeping and the baking and the dusting. She hated the sound of the baby's worried cry. She was tired of her mother's illnesses, tired of Moppet's mischief, tired of Methuselah's solemnity. She used to come in sometimes from her walk to the office, on a cold, moonlight evening, and stand looking in at them all through the "keeping-room" window,—her father prosing over the state of the flour-market, her mother on the lounge, the children waiting for her to put them to bed; Methuselah poring over his arithmetic in his little-old-mannish way; Moppet tying the baby and the kitten together,—stand looking till the hot, shamed blood shot to her forehead, for thought of how she was wearied of the sight.
"I can't think what's got into Sharley," complained her mother; "she has been as cross as a bear this good while. If she were eight years old, instead of eighteen, I should give her a good whipping and send her to bed!"
Poor Sharley nursed her trouble and her crossness together, in her aggrieved, girlish way, till the light went out of her wistful eyes, and little sharp bones began to show at her wrists. She used to turn them about and pity them. They were once so round and winsome!
Now it was probably a fact that, as for the matter of hard work, Sharley's life was a sinecure compared to what it would be as the wife of Halcombe Dike. Double your toil into itself, and triple it by the measure of responsibility, and there you have your married life, young girls,—beautiful, dim Eden that you have made of it! But there was never an Eden without its serpent, I fancy. Besides, Sharley, like the rest of them, had not thought as far as that.
Then—ah then, what toil would not be play-day for the sake of Halcombe Dike? what weariness and wear could be too great, what pain too keen, if they could bear it together?
O, you mothers! do you not see that this makes "a' the difference"? You have strength that your daughter knows not of. There are hands to help you over the thorns (if not, there ought to be). She gropes and cuts her way alone. Be very patient with her in her little moods and selfishnesses. No matter if she might help you more about the baby: be patient. Her position in your home is at best an anomalous one,—a grown woman, with much of the dependence of a child. She must have all the jars and tasks and frets of family life, without the relief of housewifely invention and authority. God and her own heart will teach her in time what she owes to you. Never fear for that. But bear long with her. Do not exact too much. The life you give her did not come at her asking. Consider this well; and do not press the debt beyond its due.
"I don't see that there is ever going to be any end to anything!" gasped Sharley at night between Moppet's buttons.