“But, you know, I loved him so,” said Nettie naîvely.
CHAPTER LXXXIV.
Days and weeks flew by. Katy and Nettie were never weary of comparing notes, and relating experiences. Nettie thought gloomy attics, scant fare and cross landladies, the climax of misery; and Katy considered a score of mile-stones, with Nettie and a loving mother at one end, and herself and a cross grandmother at the other, infinitely worse.
“Why, you can’t tell anything about it,” said Katy. “Grandma took away a little kitty because I loved it, and burned up a story-book mamma brought me, and tore up a letter which mamma printed in big capitals on a piece of paper for me to read when I was lonesome; and she wouldn’t let me feed the little snow-birds when they came shivering round the door; and she made me eat turnips when they made me sick; and she said I must not run when I went to school, for fear it would wear my shoes out; and she put me to bed so early; and I used to lie and count the stars (I liked the seven little stars all cuddled up together best); and sometimes I looked at the moon and thought I saw faces and mountains in it, and I wondered if it was shining into mamma’s window; and then I thought of you all snug in mamma’s bed; and then I cried and cried, and got up and looked out into the road, and wondered if I could not run away in the night, when grandmother was asleep. Oh, Nettie, she was a dreadful grandmother! She tried to make me stop loving mother. She told me that she loved you better than she did me; and then I wanted to die. I thought of it every night. I knew it was not true, but it kept troubling me. And then she said that very likely mamma would go off somewhere without letting me know anything about it, and never see me again. And she always said such things just as I was going to bed; and then you know I could not get to sleep till almost morning, and when I did, I dreamed such dreadful dreams.”
“You poor little thing!” exclaimed Nettie, with patronizing sympathy, to her elder sister, and laying her cheek against hers, “you poor little thing! Well, mamma and I had a horrid time, too. You can’t imagine! The wind blew into the cracks of the room so cold; and the stove smoked; and I was afraid to eat when we had any supper, for fear mamma would not have enough. She always said ‘I am not hungry, dear,’ but I think she did it to make me eat more. And one night mamma had no money to buy candles, and she wrote by moonlight; and I often heard her cry when she thought I was asleep; and I was so afraid of mamma’s landladies, they screamed so loud, and scowled at me so; and the grocer’s boy made faces at me when I went in for a loaf of bread, and said ‘Oh, ain’t we a fine lady, aint we?’ And the wheel was off my old tin cart—and—oh—dear—Katy—” and Nettie’s little voice grew fainter and fainter, and the little chatterbox and her listener both fell asleep.
Ruth, as she listened in the shadow of the further corner, thanked God that they who had had so brief an acquaintance with life’s joys, so early an introduction to life’s cares, were again blithe, free, and joyous, as childhood ever should be. How sweet to have it in her power to hedge them in with comforts, to surround them with pleasures, to make up to them for every tear of sorrow they had shed,—to repay them for the mute glance of sympathy—the silent caress—given, they scarce knew why, (but, oh, how touching! how priceless!) when her own heart was breaking.
And there they lay, in their pretty little bed, sleeping cheek to cheek, with arms thrown around each other. Nettie—courageous, impulsive, independent, irrepressible, but loving, generous, sensitive, and noble-hearted. Katy—with veins through which the life-blood flowed more evenly, thoughtful, discriminating, diffident, reserved, (so proud of those magnetic qualities in her little sister, in which she was lacking, as to do injustice to her own solid but less showy traits;) needing ever the kind word of encouragement, and judicious praise, to stimulate into life the dormant seeds of self-reliance. Ruth kissed them both, and left their future with Him who doeth all things well.
Twelve o’clock at night! Ruth lies dreaming by the side of her children.