This was just as well, perhaps, for it gave the long-estranged sisters time to correspond with each other, and so get over a little of the first strangeness of their meeting. By the end of the week, however, Herbert heard that his mother was to reach Fairfield on Saturday morning, and he would drive over to Dr. Perceval's with Edward, as had been arranged, and that he should meet his mother and aunt at Fairfield in the afternoon. When he got there he found that a considerable improvement had been effected all round. Elsie was able to come down to the sitting room, where a good fire was burning, and Herbert found his mother petting and making much of her niece.
A general glow of happiness and satisfaction seemed to pervade the cottage now, so that the lad could scarcely believe it was the same place he had entered only a week before, for then the chill desolation of the sitting room seemed to strike upon him most cruelly. The furniture was the same, the people the same; but yet how changed! For now hope pointed with rosy fingers to the future, whereas before, despair stared the widow in the face, and she saw nothing but the workhouse beyond the present starvation.
Help had come just in time to save her from utter collapse—had come, through each and all of the friends about her doing the duty that belonged especially to them—the duty that lay nearest to their hand!
If Mrs. Milner felt somewhat rebuked for her worldly-wise method of protecting herself, she made ample and practical amends for it, now that she had met her sister once more. They always had been dear friends, as well as sisters, in their early days, and so they became again.
Mrs. Winn moved away from Fairfield the following spring; for nothing would satisfy Herbert but that Elsie should go to a high school, and finish her education in the way she might have done, if she had not resigned the scholarship she had won.
Tom went to college when his mother left Fairfield, confident now that she would be cared for, and with his mind free to give all his attention to study, and to share with his friend Jack the few holidays allowed during term time.
In the future, there was no lack of means for Mrs. Winn, any more than there was for her sister. But it was agreed by all that this might have been very different, if it had not been for Elsie's scholarship, and the way she disposed of it.
THE END