“I did,” said Faith, stoutly; “I kissed her eyes, both two of ’em, and her nose, and her mouth and her neck; then I pulled her hair, and then I spinched her; but I thought she’d have to be banged a little. Wasn’t it a bang, though!”
It really did me good to begin the day with a hearty laugh. The days usually look so long and blank at the beginning, that I can hardly make up my mind to step out into them. Faith’s pillow was the famous pebble in the pond, to which authors of original imagination invariably resort; I felt its little circles widening out all through the day. I wonder if Aunt Winifred thought of that. She thinks of many things.
For instance, afraid apparently that I should think I was afflicted with one of those professional visitors who hold that a chance relationship justifies them in imposing on one from the beginning to the end of the chapter, she managed to make me understand, this morning, that she was expecting to go back to Uncle Forceythe’s brother on Saturday. I was surprised at myself to find that this proposition struck me with dismay. I insisted with all my heart on keeping her for a week at the least, and sent forth a fiat that her trunks should be unpacked.
We have had a quiet, homelike day. Faith found her way to the orchard, and installed herself there for the day, overhauling the muddy grass with her bare hands to find dandelions. She came in at dinner-time as brown as a little nut, with her hat hanging down her neck, her apron torn, and just about as dirty as I should suppose it possible for a clean child to succeed in making herself. Her mother, however, seemed to be quite used to it, and the expedition with which she made her presentable I regard as a stroke of genius.
While Faith was disposed of, and the house still, auntie and I took our knitting and spent a regular old woman’s morning at the south window in the dining-room. In the afternoon Mrs. Bland came over, babies and all, and sent up her card to Mrs. Forceythe.
Supper-time came, and still there had not been a word of Roy. I began to wonder at, while I respected, this unusual silence.
While her mother was putting Faith to bed, I went into my room alone, for a few moments’ quiet. An early dark had fallen, for it had clouded up just before sunset. The dull, gray sky and narrow horizon shut down and crowded in everything. A soldier from the village, who has just come home, was walking down the street with his wife and sister. The crickets were chirping in the meadows. The faint breath of the maple came up.
I sat down by the window, and hid my face in both my hands. I must have sat there some time, for I had quite forgotten that I had company to entertain, when the door softly opened and shut, and some one came and sat down on the couch beside me. I did not speak, for I could not, and, the first I knew, a gentle arm crept about me, and she had gathered me into her lap and laid my head on her shoulder, as she might have gathered Faith.
“There,” she said, in her low, lulling voice, “now tell Auntie all about it.”
I don’t know what it was, whether the voice, or touch, or words, but it came so suddenly,—and nobody had held me for so long,—that everything seemed to break up and unlock in a minute, and I threw up my hands and cried. I don’t know how long I cried.