RESOLVED AND MARY JANE.
Land o’ Goshen! Madam’s a cryin’!” Mary Jane had rubbed her eyes repeatedly, believing they deceived her; but she was now forced to admit the truth of their report.
“’Tain’t no sech a thing!” retorted Resolved, testily. Yet he advanced to peep over his sister’s shoulder at this startling phenomenon; then he pushed his spectacles up out of place, the better to “see with his own eyes” this unprecedented proceeding, and ejaculated: “My-soul-I-declare!”
This was what he beheld.
Daniel Calthorp sitting near the window, leaning his brow upon his hand, not indeed to veil his sightless eyes from any untoward spectacle, but to hide the workings of his own face.
Kentucky Bob standing in the doorway, uneasily shifting his great length from foot to foot, and ready for flight the instant things became “a trifle too tropercal fer a Westerner.”
While Steenie was kneeling before the Madam’s chair, her warm little hands resting upon the worn white hands in the lady’s lap, and her eager, loving glances trying to interpret the conflicting emotions which pictured themselves upon the noble face above her.
The worst sign of all, in Mary Jane’s opinion, was that her proud mistress evidently didn’t even care how many witnessed this unusual display of weakness. “She ain’t a tryin’ ter hide nothin’! Not a tear! Poor soul, poor soul! She’s a down deep in the waters o’ triberlation when she lets go o’ her hefty sperrit, an’ don’t mind us a seein’ what we do now. That ever I should a lived ter look at Madam Calthorp a weepin’ tears! Oh, my soul, oh! I did think ’at we’d manage ter go out the old house, as Steenie says, ‘colors flyin’’ an’ hearts braced up, even if bust. But when she—she—gins out, let us all gin out. Oh, me—me!”
“Shat up carn’t ye? Hark! What’s the youngun a sayin’?”
Curiosity comforted the faithful old serving-woman’s immediate grief; she paused in the very middle of a sigh to listen.