The general and the judge looked for the morning papers.
Miss Anna sat down to cut the leaves of a new novel.
But old Miss Lyon took the hand of the pale, tearless, motionless child, and led her away.
Little Drusilla, sensitive, impressible and inexperienced, dropped under the heavy blow that had fallen on her with all the force of a first great sorrow. She fell ill, nearly unto death, moaning, in her semi-delirium, snatches of her grief:
“Oh, don’t go! don’t go! Two years—two long, long years! Oh! so far away! His man could go with him, and not I—not I who will die about it! Oh, come back! come back, or I will die—indeed I will die!”
Mrs. Lyon soothed this distress as well as she was able, and when, after weeks of illness, the little girl grew better, the old lady told her of all Mr. Alexander’s plans for her welfare—that he had decided she must be sent to school and educated like a young lady; that afterwards she was to be taken to live as a companion to Miss Anna.
Drusilla listened very humbly and gratefully to this communication; but much as she loved knowledge, and anxious as she was to acquire it, she felt too bereaved and sorrowful to take delight in that or in anything else, as yet.
As soon as the child recovered her health, she was fitted out and put to one of the best boarding schools in the city.
Her mother made no objection, only mumbled to herself this piece of philosophy:
“If we don’t know much of the future, of this we may be certain—when we expect anything to turn out this way, it will be sure to turn out that. I thought the child was going to be a nuisance and a bore, and behold! she is a treasure and a pet! And so it is with everything!”